You learn a lot about a person when you ask them about their holiday traditions. For our November 2023 cover feature, “How We Holiday,” we put a call out to find out how D Magazine staffers celebrate and we got a surprising variety of responses. In the feature, Aileen Jimenez writes about the hojarascas her family picks up before heading for the border.
There’s Kym Rock Davidson’s bittersweet dispatch on the Egg Roll-a-rama that might make your eyes leak a little. Nataly Keomoungkhoun writes about the handcrafted Christmas cards she never sends. And then there is my suggestion that maybe you just go away and avoid family altogether. Relatable, right?!? My husband is not delighted that I publicized my Turkey Day dreams.
It’s not the first time I have offended my family. Back in December 2017, I wrote an essay in which I bite the hands that feed me mashed potatoes and cashmere sweaters. It never appeared online, as some of my relatives felt a little sore about the whole thing. But since I’m already in hot water, and because nothing much has changed in the six years since writing it, and because my relatives know I really do love them all dearly, I will leave it here for your reading pleasure. And of course, we’d love to hear how you holiday in Dallas. Read our story, then drop your traditions and favorite ways to celebrate in the comments below.
The best thing about living in Dallas is that my entire extended family and my in-laws live around here, which means my husband and I have never had to hire a babysitter to cover date nights. The worst thing about living in Dallas is that my entire extended family and my in-laws live around here, which means all parties expect our presence over the holidays. There’s no saying, “This is my side’s year,” when everyone lives within the drive time of a Serial podcast. So my husband and I have fallen into a Yuletide routine of spending Christmas Eve with my side and Christmas Day with his, which isn’t to say it’s an easy couple days to get through.
For instance: I once got caught in the middle of a political protest in Montpellier, France, that quickly turned into a street rave with dread-headed bohemians twirling fire and tripping on synthetic drugs. It was a lot like Christmas Eve with my family—a group of 30-odd happy Christians who abide by the unspoken rule that he who speaks loudest gets heard—but instead of Montpellier, we’re in the Mid-Cities tripping on freshly unwrapped remote control cars. Because my family usually begins trickling in an hour late, and because my chef cousin gets rum-soused, delaying the feast even further, we usually don’t make it back to our East Dallas home until midnight, after our voices have turned into Bob Dylan croaks.
Fortunately, Christmas Day at my in-laws’ in North Garland consists only of my husband’s immediate family, all adults. Our vocal cords heal as we sip mimosas and nibble on egg casserole in the glow of a 12-foot flocked tree. It’s all very civilized—aside from the number of presents. The entire living room is covered in bags and boxes topped with stiff bows. It takes four hours for eight of us to unwrap them all. Multiple carloads to take them all home. Does this sound like complaining? I don’t want to seem ungrateful, but it can be overwhelming. It’s difficult at my age to maintain facial expressions of surprise and delight when gifts include Pima cotton bedsheets and hand-painted pepper grinders.
I’ve tried to make it stop. For Christmas 2015, partially inspired by tiny house TV shows, I sent an email to my mother-in-law politely explaining there would be no Christmas list as we didn’t truly need any more things.
So, dedicated to the No Things theme, and realizing that the act of ripping paper was the most thrilling part of Christmas for our 2-year-old, I gathered two sticks from our front yard and wrapped them in a tissue-lined box as I would a cashmere sweater. The gift was a hit. A couple weeks later, when my kid forgot all about his new “toys,” I simply tossed them off the porch.
Now, I don’t think my mother-in-law purposefully ignored my request, but perhaps after decades of extreme gift giving, she just forgot not to buy things out of habit. Among the gifts she gave my child that Christmas: an art easel (4 feet tall, double-sided), a stuffed horse (smaller than a real-life Clydesdale, but larger than a labradoodle), and a kids table-and-chairs set plus a matching trunk with the storage capacity to fit my husband (great hide-and-seek potential had we not refused its entry into our home). Oh, and a bike. A bike my kid never rides, but that’s no one’s fault; none of us knew he would be partial to playthings felled from sycamores.
My mother-in-law bought plenty of things for me, too, including a luxury stockpot by Nambé that softens spaghetti just as well as the one I already owned, retails for $274.99, and, since it was purchased from the brand’s Santa Fe flagship, was ineligible for return anywhere in NorthPark. Not that I tried. But her pièce de résistance came in the form of a marble plaque heavy enough if dropped to break a big toe and inlaid with gold text that read: “The Best Things in Life Aren’t Things.”
Which is true. The best things in life aren’t things, and they aren’t things saying they aren’t things either. The best thing in life is free and frequent childcare. And sticks.
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