First of all, Happy Holidays, of course. I’m typing this while watching my brother and sister organize the family gifts into their respective piles, a tradition in our family. Then I got to thinking about the importance of some of these traditions (as well as some of their drawbacks). Yes, this is one of those articles, but I still feel it’s important to talk about.

To get started, every holiday season, my family has our large family Christmas party, and as we normally trek down to Madison for it (because our relatives who live down there have larger houses) I was surprised to find out it was being held partly at our house. I came to find my parents in a mild panic as they tried to prepare the signature Holiday Prime Rib as well as the side dishes that normally go with it. We weren’t used to preparing the dinner, so it didn’t go as smoothly as everyone had hoped. Still, through our chaotic focus, we got through it all right.

Then next day came the family Christmas opening, which effectively involved five or six hours of everyone taking turns opening presents, and a large amount of group presents (in which multiple people opened similar gifts at the same time, resulting in similar objects).

Now, during these shenanigans, I was under the grip of a less-appealing tradition I’ve coined the Family Christmas Curse. This curse seems to dictate that every year I need to be severely sick during the celebrations. For the past five years, I have been sick for this family get-together, usually with a case of the flu, which was likely the case of this year (although last year the curse decided to give me the norovirus, but I digress). Needless to say as I was sleep-deprived and on the verge of passing out, I wasn’t too involved in the present opening.

I didn’t enjoy dinner as much as I normally would’ve, and I wasn’t exactly excited to open gifts or sample the snack foods that are made every year for the occasion. Instead what I enjoyed was hearing the conversation at the dinner table among my cousins. I enjoyed laughing with my brother over a list of terrible Oriental translation fails, and hearing my cousin’s boyfriend talk about some interesting bars he has visited. I enjoyed throwing crumpled-up wrapping paper back-and-forth with my cousins when they least expected it. What I enjoyed had nothing to do with food or presents (which was frankly a surprise), but it was still what the holidays are all about.