The Christmas Curse (Happyish Holidays 2023)

If your holiday season is feeling less sparkly, less warm, less…happy, you’ve come to the right place! Every year we make an episode about the bad, terrible and subpar side of the holidays and this year’s Happyish Holidays episode is a real doozy. Brianna Liestman shares how every Christmas from 2007-2010, a different member of her family ruined Christmas. There are fires, hospital visits, crying at Kay Jewelers and a shopping spree at Hot Topic! The drama is bigger than Santa’s sleigh and will give you a laugh or two if you’re needing a pick me up this month.

Listen to past Happyish Holidays episodes in our back catalog on Patreon.

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Happyish Holidays is a “Terrible, Thanks for Asking“ tradition for everyone who has a complicated relationship with the “most wonderful time of the year.” Our live podcast show—hosted by Nora McInerny and with Marcel Malekebu—brought together a blend of audio, video, and in-person holiday magic. The recording of our 2023 show is available for purchase on our Patreon Shop.

If you purchased a ticket to the livestream through The Parkway, are a paid subscriber of our Patreon or Substack, or are a paying subscriber of Nora’s Substack, check your inboxes for information on your complimentary access to the recording.

Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.

Introduction

[twinkly, magical music]

Nora: It’s that time of year again. Glittering trees. Beautiful meals shared with a beautiful group of people gathered around a beautiful table. Carolers wandering the streets with a song in their hearts. Everyone you meet is kind, reflective, brimming with gratitude for all that they have, ready to make magic for each other. 

[music down]

Or maybe not. 

Because the only thing that is as certain as death and taxes is that no matter how much tinsel, sugar, special gifts and mashed potatoes you bring into your life this holiday season, sometimes….something somewhere will still hit the fan.

LIFE, and the weird curveballs it likes to send us, doesn’t take a holiday break. 

People still get sick from November to January. Heartbreak doesn’t sleep in on New Year’s Day. 

Sometimes these special days are just another day, because whatever else is going on in our lives is all consuming or because…one person’s religious or secular holiday is another person’s Tuesday.

If that sounds like you, you’re in exactly the right place. 

This is happyish holidays, our annual Terrible Thanks for Asking tradition where we bring you real holiday stories. Where things go wrong even when you planned everything right.

marcel malekebu what do you think about a few clips from past shows here (just one or two).

This year, our episode is a story in four acts. A story from a listener named Brianna, who is going to bring us all on an Ebenezer-Scrooge-like journey through four Christmases past.

This is: The Christmas Curse.

Chapter 1: 

Act 1: Diamonds are NOT forever.[twinkle, nostalgic music]

Brianna: So in my family, it’s my two parents, my mom and my dad. They’ve been together, uh, ooh, almost. It’s definitely over 35 years by now.

And then it’s just my brother and me. We are, um, just under two years apart in age.

I grew up in a family where my parents were very young when they had both me and my brother. They were not yet 23 when we were both born. Um, I know. When I think about it, it’s… I can’t. So, a lot of… The rest of the year was, you know, lean times, uh, trying to just make it through. But Christmas was the time where we just, like, went all out with the spoiling and the gift giving and the showing how much we love each other in that way. 

Nora: 2007. was a time of transition for her family- Brianna’s older brother had just joined the military and she was a senior in high school. Joining the military is not like going off to college. They don’t have a Christmas break.

Brianna: And it’s like, well, this is really the time where we transitioned from Nuclear family unit who does Christmas together and that’s never a question to it’s gonna look different now and and so I Realized now that my parents probably had a lot of Really deep feelings going into this Christmas that I probably just didn’t have a lot of visibility to Because I was a senior in high school who was focused on all of my own things and so I also think at this time, because my brother and I were getting out of the house, we were starting to move on to be technically legally adults doing our own thing.

Uh, and my parents were really at a state, I think with their own finances, where those lean years we really had growing up weren’t the state of our family anymore. And I think that’s really where my dad was probably coming to this with is like, he wanted to get my mom something really special, really nice, something that he probably wasn’t able to get her most Christmases, especially because they were funneling a lot of that into us kids. 

Um, so the stakes are that christmas looks a little different now. We don’t know what it’s going to look like in the future. Every year for the foreseeable future is going to be kind of a shrug until, uh, until really close to the holiday. But the one consistent is going to be that my mom and dad will be together for the holiday. Uh, and so that’s, that’s the state of things going into Christmas. is the attitude my dad brings then when he approaches me and is like, I want to do something for mom. Can you help me?

[music]

Nora: What her dad decided was that he wanted to get Brianna’s mom a nice piece of jewelry. And if you’re a suburban dad whose been on a budget for decades, there is only one place to buy such a special gift.

{EVERY KISS BEGINS WITH KAY COMMERCIAL RIP}

Brianna: So he brings me the Kay Jewelers catalog that had come in the mail and had cornered me somewhere in the house to be like, I’m going to go to the North Town Mall and get this thing for your mom, and I want your opinion. Do you want to come with me? And I’m like, yes, I do. I would love to go on an adventure for love. I’m 17 years old. I think that’s the greatest thing that’s ever happened. Let’s get in the car and go this very second. 

So we grew up in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota. We drive to the North town mall up in Coon Rapids, uh, and we go to the jeweler and they bring out the necklace. My dad had seen in the catalog and he tells me, so this is a star necklace. It’s, uh, all these diamonds made into a star. My mom was in cover bands at the time, like, she did a lot of, like, uh, cover band music at, like, bars and restaurants and things, and he’s like, I want to get this for her so that she has something nice to wear if we ever go to, like, a formal setting. I know it’s not going to be her necklace forever, but I want her to know that she’s my rock star.

Nora: Oh,

Brianna: I know. I know, and that was my exact reaction.

Nora: so you go to, oh fuck, okay. Um, okay. 

Brianna: It comes with a free teddy bear that he lets me have for being his, his adventure buddy. Um, and we go home and he hides it. I don’t remember where he hid it. He might have even given it to me to hide. Uh, but he hides it and he’s just, like, pleased as punch because the entire time I am being his hype woman, like, this is the most romantic thing I’ve ever seen. If I got something like this that was so personally picked for me, I would die. You are awesome. She’s gonna love this. I can’t wait for Christmas. This is the thing I’m looking forward to with you, Dad. And he’s just sitting there. So giddy while he’s driving home. He’s like, this is just the greatest thing that has ever happened. I cannot wait for Christmas. This is gonna be wonderful.

Nora: And it gets even more wonderful.  Because Brianna’s brother calls them to say he WILL be able to come home for Christmas.

What was going to be a weird Christmas is now just a normal Christmas, and on Christmas eve, the four of them sit in the living room and open presents like they always have. 

Brianna: Everyone’s happy. We’ve got… the tree in the living room, we’ve had a nice dinner, we’re all going around opening presents, I’m sitting there just like waiting for it to be mom’s turn, and my dad has of course queued everything up so that like that’s gonna be the last present. Um. Before that present is opened, my mom opens her present from my brother, and he gets her this like, dog tag necklace that says Air Force Mom, because he’s in the Air Force, and it’s, it’s, it’s a sweet gift, it’s like maybe a 15 necklace. She fawns over it so much. much. I think she might have even immediately put it on. She’s like, this is so wonderful. I love this. I’m going to wear this all the time. I love you so much, honey. Thank you. Thank you.

Nora: can see this, and I know he got it from like the shop on base, too. 

Brianna: Oh, yeah. Oh, for sure. I wouldn’t be surprised if like, when we went to his base graduation, she had like, looked at something like that, and then just decided to get something else, and then he just like, clocked into the back of his mind, oh well, okay, Christmas is taken care of. We’re done. So, so this is, this is, this is the, this is the tone of Christmas present giving, as my dad finally gets like, His last gift, uh, and he gives it to mom, and he gives her kind of the same preamble he gave me at the mall, where he’s like, I wanted to give you something really special to let you know that you’re my rock star, um, and she opens it and the, the response is essentially, Oh, thanks, honey. End of response. 

Brianna: I’m sitting there so confused. My dad looks. Devastated. And… And then it’s just like, okay, do we want to watch a movie? What’s up?

Nora: while your dad is like,

Brianna: Very clearly dying inside because like I, my dad and I are on a very similar wavelength. And so I’m looking at him like he is, he could melt into the floor right now and just disappear.

This is the part that at the time just broke my heart the most. Apparently she eventually approached my dad and was like, Hey, we’re all going to go to the Mall of America in a couple days cause like our tradition at this point in our family, is we’re going to go to the Mall of America. We’ve gotten all of our gifts at this point. We’re going to do like returns or exchanges for things we don’t like. We’re going to take gift cards and cash we got and go have fun. And so she approaches my dad about deciding, I think I want to return the necklace. And so we go to the Kay Jewelers that’s at the Mall of America, we return the necklace, and she proceeds to spend the money for the necklace on just, like, tops at Deb and Wetseal, and my mom was also, like, because of her, like, cover band stuff, she’d buy some stuff at Hot Topic. Just like… Very, like, small, incidental things. 

Nora: Yes. Yes. She is, you know, she’s being a practical shopper. She’s being practical.

Brianna: Yes, and she’s, she’s maximizing quantity of things over, like, one big purchase, because she was just handed a nice amount of money to go spend at a mall she really enjoys. And my brother is just, like, blissfully unaware of everything and just, like, walking around a mall enjoying the fact that he got to choose how long his shower was today.

My dad is just like, have you seen Arrested Development where George Michael, like, is hanging his head and the snoopy music 

Nora: Da da da da da da.

[ ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT CLIP]

Brianna: the entire mall trip. And I am just like quietly fuming because I know I can’t say anything to my mom because I’m still, I am in this scenario that’s still the only child I am dependent on my parents still at this point, but I’m just quietly seething because I’m like, I want a fricking diamond necklace for Christmas. I remember thinking like, if I grow up and get married to someone who thinks this hard about a present and

Nora: Writes a speech?

Brianna: writes his own little speech and like sits next to me all sweetly telling me about it, I would die. How, how could she do this? As an adult, I have a lot more empathy for it. I understand how hard it is to, like, get a gift that you don’t necessarily love or you really don’t see yourself using it as much, but you see other things that you think would bring you more immediate joy. But at the time, I was just, like, This is the worst Christmas ever and all of a sudden the tone now of the rest of this week is my dad trying not to let his emotions out while clearly being miserable.

[music]

Nora: One bad gift exchange isn’t the end of the world, no. But what they don’t know, as they walk around The Mall of America – A PLACE FOR FUN IN YOUR LIFE – they are just at the beginning of their family’s Christmas Curse. 

[music]

Act 2: Thar she blows

Nora: By 2008, Brianna has graduated high school and has just finished her first semester of college. Her brother is still in the military, and her parents are in their first year of being empty nesters. 

This year, the curse started early, on Thanksgiving, when Brianna’s dad started having chest pains.

Brianna: at Thanksgiving his parents were over, my grandparents were over, and he was basically leaning over the table and my grandma was staring daggers into his eyes like, you need to go to the hospital now. 

But no, Dad waits until the next day.

Brianna: my dad comes in and is like, hey, I took care of this, this and that. I’m going to go drive myself to the ER now. And my mom and I go, uh, what? 

Nora: Guys, I’m having heart attack. I gotta, I gotta drive myself up to the hospital. You don’t mind, do ya? Okay.

Brianna: I mean it was it was a very classic dad move and he Smoked a cigarette on the way there, to which I said, Do you really think that’s a good idea? And he said, well, 

Nora: Smoke them if you got them. Yep. 

Brianna: I drove him to the ER. Left him there overnight to be observed came home to my mom saying yeah, they called five minutes after you left He had a heart attack. I now have to go. Ultimately the doctor said that And God knows this has just then fueled my dad’s stubbornness ever since that what my dad did was the right thing because on Thanksgiving, they probably would have seen it was gas, but on Friday, that’s when the heart attack happened. 

he had a heart attack Friday, he finally came home Saturday, and Sunday it’s like, well, you’ve got finals, bye. I have to leave. Uh, because these classes aren’t cheap. 

So, going into the holiday, we’re all just very aware of, I think, our mortality and the fragility of our family. And my dad has this heart attack at a young age. They tell him if you’d gone to bed at night you probably wouldn’t have woken up. So we’re all just very sensitive to how lucky we got and to how the time we have together will always end up being finite. 

[jingle bell, festive music]

Um, cut to Christmas Eve morning. I go to my shift at Old Navy. And I drive home high on 10 sweaters and a caribou mocha I didn’t have to pay for being like, cool, I got holiday money in the bank, everything’s great. I pull up to the house and there’s this giant plumber’s van in the driveway.

[ominous music]

And I think, that’s odd. Didn’t think we were having anyone over today. I don’t know if we know anyone who is a plumber. What’s up? I walk into the upper level of our house is basically completely blocked off. That’s where all of our bedrooms are. It’s also where the only bathroom that has a shower in it is. And all these strange people walking through my house,

I kind of give a look to my parents. And one of them says something like, so your brother was taking a shower. don’t really know what happened. All we know is at some point your dad noticed water coming down the walls of the family room. 

We do need running water in our homes. But it’s best if it stays in the pipes. Water IN THE WALLS is not good. And getting the water to STOP flowing through the wall requires professionals. Plumbers. Emergency Plumbers. On Christmas Eve. Many of them.

Nora: Can you tell us like, what?  Like, what did the house look like over, like, Christmas eve and Christmas? Can you describe it? 

Brianna: there’s definitely like draperies put over all of the carpet upstairs for, to like get, uh, to not ruin the carpet with people’s floors or walking in and out. Bathroom upstairs, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, is basically unusable. So it’s like, I hope you took a shower before my brother did because you’re not going to take one for a couple days.

Um, we’re all sharing the half bath in the like, slight lower level that’s just a toilet and a sink. And that’s how we’re all trying to get ready. There might’ve been a couple of times where we could like get around the bathroom construction upstairs, but like Christmas Eve, it definitely wasn’t happening christmas day. It’s possible we maybe got around it a bit more. But I don’t remember if I had planned to like take a shower Christmas Eve night, but I definitely didn’t. Uh, so I was gonna go into I was gonna go into Christmas with my grandparents. Super smelly. That was just gonna have to be it.

Nora: This is their gift exchange night. And sure, they COULD wait until tomorrow. But this is the tradition, so they just keep pushing things back. 4pm. 5pm. 6pm…until the plumbers leave…at 9pm.

Brianna: So not only are we just kind of sitting in the living room waiting, but like we can see everything happening. They can see us Everything’s kind of on top of each other Um, our elderly neighbors who live next door, whose kids were all kind of grown, were planning to come over to have a dinner with us and then they were going to essentially just like hang out while we did our gift exchange. So all of us are just sitting here. We might have even waited to eat until they left because by 9pm every single person in that house was very grouchy. And I’m sitting there looking at my brother like, what did you do? Why did you do? 

To this day, I do not know what he did in that bathroom. I don’t know why everything leaked so horribly. 

I was so like high on life and The drop was so far down and those, the reconstruction of our bathroom and our family room ended up taking weeks. So they probably took a couple of days off around Christmas, but like they were there in and out for weeks later.

I’d ended up over that winter break from college getting my wisdom teeth out. So like I’m sitting there recovering from surgery while like, People are trying to reconstruct our bathroom. So it just, it wasn’t just a one day thing. It just ended up bleeding into all of the days following and all of the like time I was home from college, all of the time he was home from the military, uh, was just fixing the bathroom.

Nora: Clearly the curse is ramping up. We started with a bad gift choice, but it’s escalated to heart attacks and expensive bathroom renovations. And for those of you keeping score at home, we have one Christmas where her mom ruined it. One Christmas where her brother ruined it.

When we come back, Brianna tells us about the Christmas of 2009, and who the curse touched that year.

That’s Chapter 3: Old Navy waits for nobody.

MIDROLL

Act 3: Old Navy Waits for No One 

[theme music-three note chime]

Nora: Um, alright. It’s time for 2009.

Brianna: My year. This one is me. This one is very much on me. 

Um, so the night before Christmas Eve, I’d come home from work and my gas tank was I don’t think the light had turned on quite yet. And I was 19 and irresponsible and cold. And I mean, I guess to my credit also, I was a woman who might have had to go to a gas station alone at night. So I decided not to get gas. I was like, I’ll definitely wake up tomorr ow morning early enough to get gas on the way there.

I’m gonna be fine. It’s gonna be fine. Christmas Eve morning, I obviously don’t do that. I obviously sleep until the moment I absolutely have to wake up. I’m panicked because I definitely don’t have time to get gas and drive through the snow to get to work on time. And Old Navy takes Christmas Eve very seriously. There’s a lot of people that are potentially going to be coming in, except spoiler alert, no one comes in, but they think it’s going to be the end of the world and so they plan for that. 

so I’m carrying the anxiety of, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, I can’t be late, I can’t be late, I can’t be late.Uh, and I wake up my dad and I say, I’m so sorry, can you drive me to work? And then when I come home, I’ll go fill the car with gas. And you know, he sighs, but also he relates because he, uh, is like me. We find out 14 years later, turns out we both have ADHD. Uh, big surprise, uh, to no one. so he’s coming at it with some empathy but also annoyance because he now has to drive in the snow to take me to work even though, in his eyes, I’m a full grown adult who should be able to handle this by himself. Like, I’m pretty sure at the age I was, my mom was pregnant with my brother. So like, at… 19, my mom’s like, Well, I’m going to have a child and a huge responsibility, and I’m like, I can’t get myself to Old Navy in time. Ugh, so…

so he takes me there, he drops me off, he’s like, I’ll come pick you up at two. If you get off work early because there’s no customers like every other freaking year, call me, I’ll come get you. 

So that doesn’t happen because on the way home, he’s driving through Um, a busy intersection. Um, and a car all of a sudden just turns left and hits my dad’s car. Like it was stopped at the light and then all of a sudden it’s just like, it’s go time and hits my dad. 

So he gets out of the car, he does all of the checking things. There’s a witness that stops for a second and is like, everybody, okay, everyone’s physically Okay. Pretty dang huge dent in the car. My dad later tells me that as he’s talking to the person who hit him, it’s very clear that this person had like maybe had a really early morning dental appointment because they look like they’re just like on laughing gas or something. 

Nora: side note, they were probably NOT coming from a dental appointment early christmas eve morning? I’m assuming this witness was just high on something else…

They’re on some kind of medication that is maybe not giving them the best judgment at the moment. And the witness says very clearly, No, the light had not turned green for the green arrow. This guy just drove out of nowhere. But because it’s Christmas Eve, the witness says, Yeah, but I can’t hang out.

Nora: got some more to pee,

Brianna: I got places to go. And doesn’t stay for when, like, the police officer finally arrives. So then when the police officer arrives and gets everyone’s statements and gets all of that, the police officer is like, Well, we can’t prove. he didn’t have a green light or a yellow arrow or something. So we can’t treat this as a like 100 percent fault accident for that guy. So my dad is then driving home with this giant dent in his car and knowing that He’s probably going to at least partially have to pay for the repair of it, and it’s definitely our oldest car So I can’t remember if it ended up being totaled or if we just got a new car Not long or he got a new car not long after that, but he’s very not happy about it and so Either here or my mom calls me to be like, yeah, we’re going to go put gas in your car and then we’ll pick you up because this car is just completely out of commission.

And for the longest time, because I was a stubborn 19 year old, I was like, No, no, no. Dad ruined this one. He ruined this Christmas because he’s the one who got in an accident. But it was very clear that the car would not have been on the road in that intersection at that time if I had just gotten myself up early enough to get gas or had gotten gas the night before. So… I, I concede that this one is mine. I ruined this Christmas because, I mean, we’re going into this Christmas super happy that, like, no one’s had a medical event, my brother’s gonna be coming home for Christmas, there’s no present that has a lot of, like, pressure on it this year…

Nora: but still…the curse has struck her family once again. Like a wild-eyed driver coming from “the dentist” stuck her father’s car.Like pipes mysteriously bursting in a wall. Like a rejected necklace from renowned jeweler, Kay. a diamond necklace was rejected and feelings were hurt on Christmas Eve. 

1 is misfortune. 2 is barely a chain. But 3? 3 is a curse. And at this point, Brianna and her family starting to wonder: “is this is how every Christmas will go?

After the break, the Christmas Curse continues with Chapter 4: what’s that smell?

MIDROLL

[jingle bells interlude]

Act 4: Stocking Fire

Brianna: 2010. Uh, for me, this was my final year in college because I’d done PSEO, so like, this was the last year I was going to be coming home for Christmas from my college town. We didn’t know what the future Christmases were going to look like. Was I going to be moving back in with my parents? Was I going to get a place by myself? My dad was really hoping it was going to be the latter because my mom and I did not get along super well when I came home for the summer. Uh. And he was like, I don’t know that I really want to live in that forever. So, I’m at this point where like, I’m having all of the like, anxiety of like, what happens now? Where am I going to live? How am I going to make money? Uh, how do I feed myself? 

This is also the first Christmas I bring my now husband home. 

So there’s the addition of, who’s this new person? Will this person stay around for all these Christmases to come? Uh, we like this person more than the person you’ve brought home for Christmas before. Uh, so that’s good, but what does this mean? You’re going to his sister’s house for Christmas. How many more Christmases are you going to be doing together? And we’re kind of getting out of this. This transitionary period where we’re then going full speed into adulthood and whatever we start to build after 2010 is probably going to be the long term, this is what Christmas looks like. 

Nora: Yeah, yeah. It’s such a strange time. 

Brianna: Mm hmm. 

Nora: does this boyfriend who doesn’t know that someday he’ll be your husband, does he know your family’s recent track record?

Brianna: He does. He absolutely does. Uh, and I think we went into Christmas Day so happy because we’d gotten through Christmas Eve night without any problems. And I definitely told him that when we saw him Christmas Day, I was like, Nothing happened. Nothing happened. It’s great. The curse is over. My dad doesn’t get to ruin a Christmas.

He’s very aware. He thinks it’s funny. Um, and he is blissfully, uh, he’s blissfully ignorant to, uh, the possibility of anything happening Christmas Day because we’d gotten through Christmas Eve night without any problems. Christmas. I mean, we all were. We really thought we were home free at that point.

So Christmas Day comes, we go to my aunt’s for Christmas, we have a nice time, he meets some of the more extended members of my family, um, he meets the grandma that I want approval from and gets it, and his sister on his dad’s side lives not too far away, so they usually have a get together and we decide we’re gonna go there together. I’m gonna meet, uh, his brother and sister and his niece and nephew, uh, who I haven’t met yet. And my family is just gonna go home and have a nice restful night watching a Christmas story and eating leftovers from Christmas Eve night. And it’s great. Cool. We’re in this, like, just chill part of Christmas.

Everything’s fine. And, I can’t remember if it was when we were driving to his sister’s or driving home. I’m gonna guess it was when we were driving home because I definitely didn’t check my phone while I was there, and I think the timeline would be too fast if we were driving to his sister’s. Uh, but I checked my phone, and there’s just this all caps text message from my mom saying, Dad ruined a Christmas! I text back, What do you mean, Dad ruined a Christmas? And she proceeds to tell me that I’d brought home this, like, jeweled stocking from Old Navy because I was still working there because I was still in college. Shout out to Old Navy. Um, and I’d had a bunch of candy in it from just, like, various gifts and buying candy for myself.

And we had large dogs, so anything on the kitchen counter was not going to be a safe thing. thing because it was going to be, uh, potentially grabbed by them while we were out of the house. And so Christmas morning, one of my parents had put it in the microwave. I don’t know why, not on top of like the refrigerator or in a cabinet, but they’d put it in the microwave.

To their credit, Dogs couldn’t get it, but my dad makes himself a little dish of leftovers Christmas Day night. And he puts it in the microwave, and he does what he always does when he puts something in the microwave. He walks away to go do something, um, and forgets about the food for like 5 or 10 minutes before he finally comes back. And he’s like, oh cool, I can eat this now.

Apparently my brother is the first one to notice. Because he yells out, is something burning? My mom goes into the kitchen and the microwave is on fire because it turns out little plastic jewels and stockings, uh, are not supposed to be microwaved. Uh, and it has lit a fire inside the microwave.

Nora: How did he not see a stocking in the microwave? ADHD. What do you, what does that smell like? 

Brianna: Oh, just burning rubber. Just, it just… Burnt rubber is, is what it smells like.

Nora: it’s so hard in Minnesota to have something smell bad in your house because to open the windows also means to let in truly arctic air and then try to reheat your house.

Brianna: Yeah, and our kitchen was not super set up to even vent well. We had like the one window over the sink 

Nora: Oh yes, classic, yeah. One win. That’s all you need. 

Brianna: That’s all you need. And then our, like, patio door didn’t go outside. It went out to, like, a three season porch. So even if you, like, opened that, there’s still, like, a very large barrier between you and the cold. Which, in most cases, is great. In this case, was not.

Nora: Yeah, yeah. Not great. Not great when you have the smell of burning plastic in your home. Um, Is this stocking sentimental to you?

Brianna: No, but I am the only person in my family who cares about decorating for Christmas. My dad would always help me, but, and most of the helping would be going into the garage and lifting the things out that I couldn’t. But I would tell my mom, I will put up all of the Christmas decorations by myself and take them down.

when you want me to, but we’re not, not having a tree. We’re not, not putting these things up. And so this is, I don’t think anyone else in my family has a stocking and I had bought one for myself because I’m like, well, I want a stocking and I can put this up in my apartment and I can bring it with me. to be an adult and maybe someday it will become a sentimental stocking because it’ll be this like hallmark of me building my own traditions.

Um, but at the time it’s just an old navy stocking I’d bought that year.

Nora: How does your dad feel about finally ruining Christmas?

Brianna: Horrible. He feels, he probably feels the weight of it more than any of us had ever felt. the weight of our own Christmases we ruined. And of the, like, damages and the cost of it, of the years where that was the focal point, his was definitely the least expensive Christmas ruining. Like, they bought a new microwave and had to install it, but considering the cost of, like, a bathroom and family room restructuring and a car, it was really inexpensive.

But I think he not only carried the weight of it because he just felt really bad, but he also knew how much I cared about Christmas decorations and how I was really trying to build that for myself. That I think he carried the weight of like, the possibility of disappointing me very heavily. 

when I came inside the house after driving home from my now sister in law’s I was laughing. I was upset for maybe like two minutes of the drive And then I just broke into hysterical laughter because I’m like, of course, this is what happened. Of course this happened What what else would happen on Christmas? And so he was He him knowing that like eventually I wasn’t upset helped. My husband thought it was funny Super funny. And was also like, how does, how does a person do that? How does, how does that happen?

Nora: Again, if you have ADHD it’s very easy to imagine how this happens. 

So that’s four Cursed Christmases. One for each member of their family.

But now, every person in Brianna’s family has “ruined” Christmas. And as Christmas 2011 approached…they all wondered what would happen this year? Whose turn would it be to ruin Christmas? 

And then…nothing bad happened. The holiday went off without fires or heart attacks or plumbers dragging tools in the background of their gift exchange.

Nora:So, do you think that reaching the collector set of four, did that break the curse for your family?

Brianna: It might have. Uh, I think maybe getting out of this, um, Brianna’s in college and my brother’s in like the first years of military and everything’s tenuous. I think being in that state of our life was really the curse. Um, it’s very possible that the curse was lifted at that point. Um, it’s possible that by 2011, my now husband had not earned enough place in the family to maybe get us like a… Like a five time hit. 

But by 2011 I’m working a job. I feel like a big person. My now husband and I are living together, I have a 401k. I have a salary. I pay for my own food. We all share a Netflix account. It’s, it’s this new state of our family where what we’re building now is going to be what the longterm thing is. 

[music]

Nora: Brianna is now in her 30s. She’s a wife and a mother herself, and can look at this four year period in her family as not a cursed one, but actually just a big transition moment. 

Her parents were entering a very different phase of parenthood, with their children living out of the house and only coming home a few times a year. Brianna and her brother were becoming adults, and learning hard lessons like….how to properly take a shower without ruining the pipes or… filling the gas tank before the last possible second.

There likely wasn’t a curse. Instead it was four people, going through their own personal changes and trying to still come together and enjoy the time of year that always brought them closer. 

The one constant in all of these stories, besides Brianna working at Old Navy, is that Brianna’s family was always together when all these mishaps happened.

The necklace was a bust, and her dad’s feelings were hurt, but it was bought with so much love and admiration for his wife.

The pipes bursting created chaos and discomfort for the family. But the person who prompted them to burst was her brother, home from the military, enjoying a rare visit with his family. 

The car crash happened when a father was helping his adult daughter out, and the stocking lighting on fire…well that’s just funny because…ADHD. 

Her family had four “bad” christmases, but each of those bad Christmases was still centered around being together, loving each other, and creating memories. Even if they were chaotic memories.

That’s what Happyish Holidays is all about. Nobody’s holiday looks like a Hallmark movie. Most of us go to Christmas and are triggered by our Mom or have a tense conversation with a sibling we had an argument with 3 months ago. There are travel nightmares, financial stress and pressure to perform a good holiday.

If that’s you this year, allow me to give you permission to have a bad holiday. Or…an okay holiday! Because a bad holiday is just a bad day. And we have those all the time. 

There is nobody grading you on how magical or loving your holiday is, so if you don’t have the oomph to give it this year, that’s okay! Every holiday can’t be happy, sometimes all we can hope for is Happy…ish.

CREDITS