AM LY
Merry mayhem
Feeling like your holiday doesn’t measure up? One stressed-out
mom discovers that “perfect” is in the eye of the beholder.
BY HOLLY ROBINSON |
PHOTO LEVI BROWN
T
hat’s it. I’m quitting Christmas.
My proclamation comes the
instant I open Sara’s card, which
triggers an annual bout of
holiday anxiety.
Sara is one of my best friends. She’s
charming and craft-y. She makes her own
wrapping paper, decorates her house to look
like a magazine spread, and dedicates an entire
closet to paper goods arranged by holiday. Like
clockwork, her card arrives a month early, a
tasteful black-and-white portrait of Sara with
her husband, two children, and two golden
retrievers. All of them blond and in matching
sweaters. Even the dogs are blond and
matching. Without the sweaters. I hand my
husband the card.
Dan blinks at me in surprise. “What do you
mean you’re quitting? We always have a
great Christmas.”
“No, we don’t,” I counter. “Don’t you
remember the year the cat ate the tinsel and
was sick all through dinner? And that time I let
the kids decorate the tree and they hung all of
the ornaments on the same side?”
He nods. “That’s the year the tree fell down.”
“Exactly! Why can’t any of our holidays
be perfect?”
“Because there’s no such thing,” Dan says.
Hmph. Tell that to Sara. Convinced that
everyone else had Hallmark Hall of Fame holi-
days, while ours was a caravan of complications
that often broke down by the side of the road,
I set out to prove it, asking my friends about
their favorite holiday memories.
Peach tells me about the year she decided to
cook chestnuts. She hadn’t bothered to look up
a recipe, figuring an hour at 400 degrees would
get the job done. She didn’t know that you’re
supposed to score chestnuts before cooking
them. “When I opened the oven door, the
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BETTER HOMES AND GARDENS | DECEMBER 2010 | BHG.COM
