Conversations With Cinthia

Garrison Keillor once said, “The lovely thing about Christmas is that it’s compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together.”  Whether you are working Christmas, spending it alone, hosting a gathering you hope will be beautiful, or gearing up to attend the usual round of work and family activities, you are in this with all the rest of us – and we all need to survive it! Holidays are a time when we tend to think we should be happy, but they happen in the context of everything else.  The expectation of warmth and cheer can highlight our pain and that of others.  The consistency of traditions can emphasize the changes that have occurred over the last year, including difficult ones.  Even positive changes can upset the family equilibrium, and sometimes the system wants to move back into its usual state.  Exposure to family can bring back memories, good and bad, and stir up expectations that we should have more in common than we do.  Expectations can be strong around the holidays: “There’s no pla