Ah, the holidays.

Millions of people all over the world are preparing for holiday breaks from work, school and life as they currently know it.

These millions of people are headed home via planes, trains and/or automobiles.

However, no matter the means of transportation, everyone traveling does one thing in common before heading home: they pack their bags.

“Home for the holidays” has such a nice ring to it and for many, this rings true. However, for the rest, “home for the holidays” might as well be a license to film a bad family drama that’s airing on Bravo next season.

Nonetheless, we still begin the process of heading home.

How long does it take you to pack that bag to take home with you?

The process tends to go something like this: throw in a sock here, a scarf there, a little embarrassment in the front zip pocket, your family’s matching holiday pajamas on the bottom of the suitcase and why not throw some guilt into that side pocket to take with you while you’re at it? Needless to say, we tend to bring a lot of baggage home for the holidays.

Whether it’s physical baggage or emotional baggage, there’s just something about the holidays that encourages all that baggage to start unfolding itself.

It doesn’t need permission, it doesn’t need help, it just needs an audience of family members who you see (maybe) twice a year and that second cousin’s wife that you’ve never really liked anyways.

But here’s the big question: how long does it take us to unpack those bags? How willing are we to open the bag, unfold whatever we stuffed in there and even worse… be brave enough to wear it around.

Some baggage gets lost and never makes it with us to our destination.

Sometimes, we are grateful for these lost pieces of baggage.

Other times, all of our baggage makes it home but never gets out of the bag.

Forget about the cat getting out of the bag, when your baggage gets out, the Bravo camera crew better start rolling.

Benjamin Franklin famously said that “guests, like fish, tend to smell after three days.” For the holiday host, I’m sure you can find some truth in this.

As you sit down for that holiday family dinner after a long journey of packing and traveling, just remember a few things:

1. If you’re the guest, try not to be the fish that Benjamin Franklin tosses after three days.
2. If you’re the ham, keep the jokes in check. Everyone loves some good humor but there’s always a line never to cross.
3. At the end of the day (it's funny but it's true), we’re all just potatoes. We may get roasted by a brother or cousin from time to time but we’re better off just trying not to get mashed.

Happy holidays and best of luck.