Marc on Christmas and Family

Ed, I agree with you on the comments that you made about expectations. For whatever reason, people expect that Christmas needs to be "awesome", and the additional pressure can affect everyone's mentality going into it.

I don't know what it is about Christmas itself. It must be the memories that we all have from our childhoods, the fond memories of getting all those presents and how wonderful it all seemed. We want to experience those same joys at Christmas time, but I think that as adults, we realize the fleeting joy of things. As a result, we hope to find that same thrill in our family relationships. We want that ON CHRISTMAS, not in February, not over Independence weekend, and not at Halloween. There is something special about that time that we call Christmas.

We all know that much stress can come from the physical limitation of living in these bodies that we have; we can only be one place at one time. Given the opportunity, I'm sure that we would all choose to see everyone that is important to us on December 25th. But we can't do it. That leads to choices, and although a million factors can affect those choices. Unfortunately, the choice of where to be on Christmas can be viewed as a pick based on priority or importance. But that's not the case. The location where we end up on Christmas can never sum up the value that we place on a relationship, especially familial relationships.

Perhaps one of the greatest mistakes that we make (and I'm guilty of it too) is that we expect that all familial relationships should be hunky dory all the time. In reality, we all get on each other's nerves occasionally, and conflict is inevitable in the human experience. When we love people, we expect more. And as you mentioned Ed, when we have higher expectations, there is a greater opportunity for a "let down" or a failure.

If we learned anything from our Mom and Dad it's that family is family. We've all expanded that into our "married in" families as well. We talk about each other, we laugh at each other, we argue with each other, but we're still family. And we still get together over the holidays because we're family.

It's late on Christmas eve and here I sit in San Diego at least a thousand miles away from all of you, and I wish I was going to see you tomorrow. I love my family here too, and I'm happy to be with them. Guess what? We have the same issues on this half of the family. There's always drama, always some conflict, always some disappointments. But in the end, there is joy. Joy in the fact that we have family, people who we love despite their faults, and who love us despite all of our faults.

Have a Merry Christmas and remember that regardless of expectations or anything else, I don't think I've ever left a family get together without some fond memories, and over time, those are the ones I remember, not the bad ones. Blood is thicker than water. I love you guys, and you'll always be family.