Every family has their holiday battles. Here’s how I learned to survive them – and eventually understand what they really mean.

The Great Temperature Wars

Let me tell you about the Christmas that ended my brother’s hosting privileges. My brother runs hot – the kind of hot where he’ll wear shorts in January and call it “refreshing.” That particular Christmas, he decided to wage thermal warfare on the entire family by throwing open the windows on one of the coldest nights of the year. The temperature outside was hovering somewhere between “polar bear comfort zone” and “instant popsicle.”

Someone (and to this day, no one will confess) crept to the thermostat like a holiday ninja and cranked up the heat. This triggered my brother into launching a full CSI-style investigation, complete with interrogations about everyone’s movements in the past hour. Meanwhile, the rest of us huddled in the next room, wrapped in blankets, clutching space heaters like life preservers on the Titanic, engaging in our own act of peaceful protest. We wouldn’t budge. He wouldn’t close the windows. It was the Cold War, literally.

That was the last year we let him host, and he stopped speaking to us for a long time.

Here’s what I learned: Every family has their own version of the temperature wars. Maybe it’s not windows and thermostats – maybe it’s about how spicy the food should be, or what constitutes “appropriate” indoor lighting, or whether shoes belong on or off inside the house. These aren’t really fights about temperature or spice or footwear. They’re about control, about whose comfort matters most, about the delicate dance between being a host and being a dictator.

That’s when I realized: Christmas fights aren’t just inevitable – they’re practically tradition. Like fruit cake, but with more shouting.

The science behind our holiday meltdowns is surprisingly simple. Take sleep-deprived adults, marinate them in mulled wine, squeeze them into their childhood home, add a pressure cooker of expectations, and voilà – you’ve got yourself a festive powder keg. Throw in some sugar cookies and that one aunt who “just wants to know when you’re finally settling down,” and it’s not a question of if, but when.

The Kitchen Counter Chronicles

Picture my grandmother: a square-shaped force of nature wrapped in a housecoat that perpetually slipped off one shoulder, revealing her bra strap, and her apron was a battle-worn shield against the chaos of feeding an army. She had the kind of solid presence that made you think she could probably stop a train through sheer force of will – or at least through the strategic deployment of her wet dish towel.

Her kitchen was a miracle of spatial engineering. There wasn’t an inch of counter space that wasn’t occupied by something essential: a pot, a pan, a precious doily. So the back hall became her auxiliary kitchen, nature’s refrigerator where she’d store her baked goods. On Christmas, that hall transformed into a gauntlet of temptation – pies, cookies, and cakes lined up like soldiers waiting for deployment. The cold air preserved them perfectly, though we children would sometimes sneak out there, leaving betraying crumbs that would later earn us the dreaded wet-towel chase.

Inside, the tiny top-floor apartment of that South Boston triple-decker buzzed with the energy of too many people in too small a space. My father’s brother – my only uncle on that side – would settle into his role as the family philosopher after his third drink. I’d park myself next to him, soaking in every word like they were prophecies. He had a way of making the most mundane observations sound profound, and maybe they were. “You see that doily?” he’d say, gesturing with his glass. “That’s not just a doily. That’s your grandmother’s way of creating order in a chaotic universe.”

But here’s the thing about Christmas fights: they’re usually not about what they’re about. When your uncle stormed out because someone bought the “wrong” cranberry sauce, it isn’t really about Ocean Spray versus homemade. It’s about feeling like his family traditions weren’t being respected. When your cousin burst into tears over the Christmas tree lights, it isn’t about white versus multicolored – it was about missing her mom’s way of doing things.

Presents

My mother, meanwhile, the night before, would be upstairs at our house until 3 AM, locked in her annual wrestling match with wrapping paper and Scotch tape. A child of eight siblings, she’d learned early that love came wrapped in paper and bows, even if it took until May to pay for it. My father would retreat to his basement sanctuary, finding solace among his tools while contemplating the credit card statements to come.

Each Christmas morning with five children, it looked like a department store had been turned upside down and shaken. This wasn’t just gift-giving – this was gift-giving as an Olympic sport, and my mother was going for gold. 

Dad later told me, in one of those rare moments of financial candor that only come near the end of life, that those Christmases kept them in debt until spring flowers bloomed. But to Mom, every present was a tiny piece of the childhood abundance she never had.

At Nana’s, the children would eat first in the dining room, a strategic move that kept small hands away from the precise architecture of the adult table setting. The real show would start when someone – usually one of the live-in grandchildren, who you’d think would know better – would disturb one of Nana’s doilies. That’s when the wet towel would appear, wielded with the precision of a fencing master. The ensuing chase would send kids scattering like pigeons in a park, while my philosopher uncle would raise his glass and observe, “Notice how the pursuit of justice often disturbs the very order it seeks to preserve.”

The beauty of it all? This was normal to us. The truth beneath our holiday battles runs deeper than surface squabbles. When my mother filled our living room with more presents than Macy’s, it wasn’t really about the gifts. It was about being one of eight children and wanting to give her kids the abundance she never had. We didn’t know that some people actually paid off their Christmas presents before Valentine’s Day. Or that some mothers didn’t need to hide shopping bags in the trunk of the car for months like they were running some sort of toys-and-games smuggling operation.

When my grandmother defended her doilies with the ferocity of a guard at Buckingham Palace, it wasn’t about the lace – it was about maintaining some small measure of control in a house overrun with chaos.

The Modern Kitchen Revolution

But families, like kitchens, evolve. The kitchen revolution in my family hit me full force last Christmas at my sister’s house. Her third son, an engineer by trade, approaches holiday cooking with the same quiet precision he brings to structural dynamics. He moves through the kitchen like a chess master, each move calculated but graceful. His spreadsheet for mashed potatoes (and yes, there’s actually a spreadsheet) accounts for precise ratios of butter, cream, and potatoes – enough to feed a small army or, in our case, one hungry family with a serious potato habit.

What a change from my childhood kitchen, where my father’s sole culinary contribution was carving the turkey – a task he approached with the gravity of a surgeon and the timing of a diplomat, appearing just as everything else was ready, performing his solemn duty, then vanishing again until dinner was served. 

But watch my sister’s sons now. While one quietly orchestrates the feast, his brother plants himself at the sink like a sentinel for what seems like hours, tackling an endless ocean of pots and pans. No complaints, no fanfare – just a steady rhythm of soap, rinse, dry, repeat, until every surface gleams.

Their great-grandmother would have dropped her wet dish towel in shock – not from the mess, but from seeing men in the kitchen doing more than just the ceremonial carving. Times change. Sometimes for the better.

A Survival Guide for Holiday Peace

After enough family Christmases, you develop a sort of survival guide. Mine started with that temperature war disaster and grew with each holiday crisis. Like the year my mother’s perfectionist gift-wrapping met its match in a paper shortage at 2 AM, teaching me about lowering expectations and shorter folds on edges. Or how my grandmother’s kitchen territory battles showed me the importance of designated neutral zones. These hard-won lessons might save your own holiday sanity.

So, how do we survive the season without needing family therapy? Here’s what I’ve learned:

First, lower your expectations. Not to the floor, but maybe to a comfortable sitting height. Perfect family harmony is about as realistic as fitting down a chimney. Just ask my mother, who spent twenty years pursuing the perfect Christmas morning only to find that our favorite memories were of the disasters – like the year my cat knocked over the tree and we opened presents on the floor around the fallen branches.

Second, create strategic escape routes. I learned this from my buddy Don, who mastered the art of the well-timed dog walk whenever my grandmother’s wet towel appeared. Every good holiday needs a pressure valve. Volunteer to wash up the child before dinner. Offer to make a last-minute grocery run. Have a friend call with an “emergency” if things get dire. I once spent 45 minutes pretending to look for more wrapping paper in my car just to get some peace. It works. If someone starts a political debate, loudly announce that you think you smell something burning. When tensions rise in the kitchen, declare that you’re “just going to let the expert handle this” and back away slowly.

Third, implement the Two-Drink Rule. Not as in limit yourself to two drinks – though that’s not a bad idea. Rather, take two drinks of water before responding to any potentially inflammatory comment about politics, your parenting style, or your career choices. It’s amazing how many arguments can be avoided by simply taking a moment to hydrate. Remember also that “I need to make a phone call” is still a valid excuse to leave any room, even in 2024.

Fourth, designate neutral zones. The kitchen is usually ground zero for holiday tensions – too many cooks, too many opinions, too many ways to julienne a carrot. Create spaces where shop talk, critique, and unsolicited advice are banned. The living room becomes Switzerland: a place for neutral topics only, like how unseasonably warm it’s been (unless you have relatives who want to debate climate change). Keep a stash of chocolate hidden in your room – stress eating is better than stress screaming. Finally, remember the golden rule of family gatherings: You can be right, or you can be peaceful. Choose wisely. Does it really matter if your brother’s stuffing recipe isn’t “traditional”? Let it go. Save your energy for the important battles, like defending your rightful claim to the comfy armchair.

Finding Peace Through Acceptance

The truth is, holiday fights are part of the package deal that is family. They’re the tinsel in the carpet of our relationships – annoying, persistent, and somehow always there, no matter how well you think you’ve cleaned up. But they’re also what make our celebrations real. Perfect harmony is for Christmas cards. 

This year, I’m trying something revolutionary: acceptance. Real families bicker, argue, and occasionally hide in the bathroom scrolling through their phones until someone knocks.

Because here’s what I’ve finally figured out: the perfect Christmas isn’t about avoiding fights – it’s about loving each other anyway. Even when someone uses the good scissors to open packages. Even when someone brings up that embarrassing story from 2012. Even when someone puts the star on the tree slightly crooked.

Besides, what would we talk about next Christmas if we didn’t have this year’s drama to rehash?

What I wouldn’t give now to hear my grandmother’s wet towel snap, to watch my mother’s tired but triumphant smile as she finished wrapping that last present, to listen to one more of my uncle’s philosophical observations about the meaning of it all. These weren’t just holiday moments – they were expressions of love in all its imperfect, sometimes overheated, often over-budget glory. My mother maxed out credit cards to buy presents because each gift was really saying, “I remember being the kid who got socks when everyone else got toys.” When my grandmother chased us with that wet towel, she was really saying, “I want to give you the order and beauty I never had in my own alcoholic childhood home.” Even my brother’s temperature crusade was his way of saying, “I want to be in control of something in this chaos.”

We still fight at Christmas, of course. Different battles, different warriors, but the same underlying truth: family gatherings amplify everything we are, everything we’ve lost, and everything we hope to be. But now I know something I didn’t know then – these tensions, these imperfect moments, these are the memories we’ll treasure most. Even the fights become precious when the fighters are gone.

And yes, my brother eventually started speaking to us again. Sometimes, the best Christmas gift is simply the presence of those who remain, sharing memories of those who don’t.

Just keep the thermostat at a reasonable temperature—some lessons you only need to learn once.

And if all else fails, remember: Chinese restaurants are open on Christmas Day. In some years, the best family tradition might be knowing when to order takeout.