Happyish Holidays 2025

It’s time for Happyish Holidays, 2025 edition! Though we might not see you in person this year, Nora’s still here to listen to and tell your holiday stories gone awry. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and you’ll remember that the holidays don’t have to be happy all the time – happy-ish is the best we can ask for.

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

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Hi.

Hi. Hi there.

Hi. Hi.

Hey, Nora.

I’m Nora McInerny, and this is Thanks For Asking, a call-in show about what matters to you. Lookit, when I’m left to my own devices, I will create a parody Christmas song, and I will force my friends to produce it for me.

I’m Nora McInerny, and this is Happyish Holidays. This is our ninth annual Happyish Holidays episode, although I believe we missed a year, I believe it was 2021. A lot of balls got dropped in 2021, and I doubt that was the most important one.

Now, in years past, we would be performing a live Happyish Holidays show. We have done that online, we have done that in person. We are not doing that this year.

You are listening to a podcast episode in case you got confused by the singing and thought, am I at a live show? You’re not, you’re listening to a podcast episode.

We didn’t do a live show this year because I knew when my best friend, Caroline Moss, told me that it was not mentally the right time for me to be also producing a live show. She was correct. She was correct.

I had my regularly scheduled mental breakdown late November to early December, came out of that and I just thought, you know what, I’m glad that I did not have a live show to produce and sell tickets to, while also trying to meet my end of year

deadlines and be a decent mom. But here we are today celebrating Happyish Holidays.

We say Happyish Holidays because we know, we know that the holiday season, even if you are a very well-adjusted person with a perfectly functional family, comes with its own stress, comes with its own baggage, and that for a great many of us, this is

actually kind of a difficult time of the year, and not only because the days are about four minutes long. The sun is about to set, it’s 3:16 p.m. as I’m recording this. It’s a lot.

There’s just a lot going on. There’s a lot of expectations. There’s a lot of disappointments.

And then, you know, there’s the pressure to perform our happiness for each other, for an imaginary audience, and also to just sort of try to keep our heads above water while, you know, the economy’s kind of in freefall and the wealth gap just keeps

getting wider. Yesterday, I signed up for our health care plan, and it’s twice as much as it was when we signed up last year. So that is life in America, baby.

We are all doing our best.

And as we enter this time of, often cheer, I love the holiday season. I really do. Let us also hold space for the holidays gone wrong, the people who we are missing, and let us wish each other a happyish holiday.

Today’s episode, we have your stories, your stories of holidays gone awry. And again, this is a tradition. This is nine years strong, possibly eight, of us sharing these, having some laughs, finding our own lightness, our own sort of holiday rhythm.

I mentioned that I am a Christmas lover. I love Christmas magic. I love Christmas energy.

There are a few things that I do reliably every Christmas season. And one is that I set up my Department 56 Christmas village. I was given much of this village from my mother-in-law.

Shout out to May May, who divided her extensive collection between myself and her biological daughter, my sister-in-law. And the magic of these little Christmas houses that I coveted so much when I was young.

And I would go to my friend Erin Mulcahey’s house, and Jan had her Christmas village up. I said, someday I will be a woman. Someday I will be a woman with a Christmas village, and I will display that proudly.

And you know what?

I do.

I display my Christmas village starting November 1st. I’m clearing out all our normal decor. I’m putting up the Christmas village.

That puts me in a nice little cheery, cozy mood.

I love it. And what else do I do?

Duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh.

And I haven’t always done this. This has been like the past like five years that I’ve even had this, but now it just feels like something that I always do.

And I’m sharing this because we sometimes feel pressure to have the kind of holiday that we had growing up, to have the kind of holiday that we had last year when really our lives change all the time.

You might not be the same person that you were a year ago, five years ago. You’re certainly not the same person that you were when you were a child and someone else was making all the Christmas magic for you. Her name was probably Mom.

And you are allowed to make changes. You are allowed to have a holiday season, to have a holiday that fits who and how you are right now, not some sort of imaginary ideal that is going to be enforced by who, the Christmas police.

Okay, I’d like to see you call them. I might, and if they answer, please let me know, because I might call them on my husband who did not put up all of our outdoor lights. There are some missing.

I noticed, Matthew, don’t think you’re going to get away with it.

So if that’s where you are right now, if this holiday season feels hard, if there are things that you just don’t want to do or things that you want to start doing that you haven’t done before, just do it.

Just do it.

Let people be disappointed with you. Let people be mad at you if they must, but start a new tradition that feels good to you. And by the way, it doesn’t have to be a tradition.

It can be just something that you do this year because it makes sense for you this year. I love making these episodes because they always make me laugh and they remind me that our holidays do not need to be perfect to be memorable. And you know what?

And even the kind of disastrous ones are a good story.

Hi, Nora.

My name is Kayla. I am calling for the holiday episode. I actually adopted as a single mom.

And I’ll never forget when my daughter was six weeks old, I took her to see Santa for the first time. And as we were leaving, I had not slept at all for weeks.

Santa looked at me and he said, your present for Christmas is going to be your first night of sleep all through the night. And I laughed. I thought, oh, ha ha ha.

And I was like delirious at this point. I was moming as a single mom. I just adopted.

Life was crazy. So we go home, we go to bed that night. And will you believe that it’s our first night that she slept eight hours?

And I woke up completely delusional, just thinking like, oh, Santa’s real. I really was like, this is, is Santa real? Santa’s, no, Santa’s, yeah.

So that’s one of my favorite Christmas memories. My daughter and I will be eight. And life just keeps life in and moving right along.

I hope that you have a wonderful holiday and thank you for all the cheer and love and just wonder that you’ve brought to my life through your podcast.

Okay, first of all, Santa is real. Santa is real and that is your evidence. Santa’s real.

Santa wished you a full night’s sleep and then you got it. Tell me magic’s not real. Tell me Santa’s not real.

Find me that Santa. I bet you can’t because he was actually the real Santa. And then he like wiggled his little nose.

And I think that’s what happens in I Dream of Jeannie. Either way, he did like maybe a little like a wink, a little heel click in the air.

And then he just whoop, just whoop.

That’s just what happens when somebody moves through space and time. Right back to the North Pole after granting you your wish of a good night’s sleep. And I think that’s beautiful.

That’s wonderful. And also Santa should be giving wishes to parents, okay? Santa should be giving wishes to grownups.

Like what are you doing promising kids, you know, Nerf guns, come on.

So a few years ago, my family was gathered around the table at my grandparents’ house for the holidays.

And my grandpa, Papa, his dementia was progressing pretty quickly at the time, but he was still living at home with the help of our family and my grandma.

So we were in the middle of dinner and Papa looked toward the kitchen and said, hey, did you see that? We all turned and said, see what? He said he thought he saw a mouse or something dart across the kitchen floor.

We all just kind of brushed it off, assuming it was probably the dog. We have Ruby, who is a 10-pound Jack Russell Chihuahua mix, who Papa lovingly referred to as Rudy.

All of a sudden, Ruby launches herself through the kitchen and into the living room on what was clearly a full-blown hunting mission.

Sure enough, Papa was right, there was an extra critter in the house, but it was not a mouse, it was a flying squirrel. Ruby made sure we didn’t have much of a chase on our hands.

The whole thing definitely felt like it was pulled straight out of Christmas vacation.

A flying squirrel?

I need to know if these are native to Wisconsin, because if so, I’m moving. I’m moving. Flying squirrel, Wisconsin.

Flying squirrel, Wisconsin. Okay, let’s find out. Oh, Wisconsin is home to two species of flying squirrels, the northern flying squirrel and the southern flying squirrel.

The northern, this is wild. Keep wild life wild, Wisconsin DNR.

Okay, I won’t intervene Wisconsin, but oh boy, I need to know if this, if this flying squirrel is okay, because I would do anything for a flying squirrel, including leave them alone as the DNR has instructed me.

On December 17th, it will be three years since Papa died. He was my person, and I miss him so much every day. And this is one of my favorite memories of him.

The sound of his laugh, his proud, I told you so moment when we all found out there was another critter in the house, and all of us together around the table, exactly where Papa loved to be. Thanks, Nora.

Oh, that’s so sweet. That’s so sweet. And I love that I said I need to know more about the Flying Squirrel, and then we just went into right into RAP.

Papa. So RAP. Papa, sounds like RAP that Flying Squirrel, and Happyish Holidays to all of us, except that Flying Squirrel, who had that squirrel at a bad, bad little Christmas.

Hey, so I saw your story, and I have a story that people don’t even believe when I tell them.

When I was about four years old, my dad kept telling me all Christmas, like, we’re only bringing you pickles, you’re only going to get pickles, we’re getting you pickles for Christmas. I don’t even know what that was about.

But Christmas morning rolls around, I, at four years old, I tumble down my basement stairs to the Christmas tree, and I was like, okay, like, you can open a present.

And so naturally, being four years old, I picked the heaviest and largest present under the tree. And this is, I opened it to find a giant jar of elastic dill pickles.

So naturally, my next step was to sit on the stairs and sob cry while my parents filmed all of this on VHS tape. I have since forgiven them, and we have a great relationship, but that is my best and worst Christmas gift ever.

There’s something, like, look, I like that you can laugh about this now, because I would have lost my mind if I was a little kid who thought that all she was getting was pickles, and then I actually got pickles, and I would have flipped my lid, and I

think I would not have been able to enjoy pickles for the rest of my life, and that would have been a tragedy because I actually really, really, really love pickles. There’s, I know that there are still parents who love to, like, prank their kids.

I think it’s, like, less popular now than it was in, like, the 80s, the 90s, when we were really, that was our, that was our parental culture, was like, let’s tell a kid they’re just getting coal.

Let’s tell a kid that they’re just getting pickles, okay?

Let’s stage a kidnapping by one of our uncles in a scary Halloween mask at our cousin’s birthday party, which happens to also be on Halloween, which was so frightening that several of the kids just stuck their faces right in the cake.

I wasn’t there, I wasn’t born for that, but that’s older cousin lore in my family. And, you know, the aunts and uncles thought that was very funny and very normal to do, and now I think we would say that’s not good. Don’t do that.

I’m so glad that you weren’t put off pickles forever, and now I want pickles. Now, I actually would not mind just pickles for Christmas. Grillo’s Pickles, the Pickle Ships.

I’m telling you.

Hi, Nora.

My name’s Meg. This is my Unhinged Christmas Story. The first Christmas Eve my husband and I spent together was the Christmas Eve that we were engaged.

We’d been mostly dating long distance, so he didn’t know my family that well. It was my parents and my sister and my aunt and uncle and two cousins, so not huge. On Christmas Eve, the adults, the grown-ups let us all pick a present to open.

We opened one present on Christmas Eve. My sister, who is really generally mild-mannered and sweet and adult, picked up a present from my grandma, and it was labeled on the wrapping paper, Do not open until Christmas Day.

So my dad starts teasing my sister telling her that she can’t open it. It clearly says, do not open until Christmas Day on it. And he’s going to tell my grandma, he’s going to call my grandma right now.

And my sister gets so upset that she lifts my dad off with both hands and tells him to fuck off, and then runs upstairs crying. My mom is instantly furious and is like, you don’t have to go apologize to her.

And my dad is like, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it. And my uncle who is stoned is like, I can’t believe this. I can’t believe this.

He dropped, she dropped the S bomb and the double bird. The S bomb and the double bird, I can’t believe it. And my poor husband-to-be is just sitting there because he comes from a nice quiet family where people don’t tease each other until they cry.

Eventually, my sister came to my job fairs, picked up the present from my grandma and opened it, despite the warning on the wrapping paper and despite my dad’s taunting.

And the best part is when she opened it up, it was a DVD of a movie that she had specifically asked my grandma for. And so she goes, Oh, yeah, this is what I thought it was going to be. Like this true hysterical nut fest.

And the present wasn’t even really a surprise. Yeah, it remains a holiday classic.

I, okay, first of all, I also come from a teasing family. And it can be very overwhelming when you are also an emotional person. And I am the sister.

I am the sister who would double bird the dad, tell him to F off, run upstairs, somewhat recover, come downstairs and act like it was no big deal, open the present and be like, yeah, it wasn’t even a big deal. This is what I wanted anyways.

And you painted a really evocative picture. So thank you for that. And especially I always love when there is a stunned outsider learning a family’s dynamics and just thinking, what is happening here?

What is going on here? Okay, okay. Oh, they’re yelling at each other.

But you know what? Then it becomes lore. Then it becomes a story that you can lovingly tell and say, remember when you told dad to F off and gave him double middle fingers.

And what I actually really love the most about this story is the way that both your parents were like, okay, we gotta fix this. Because had I said the F word and then also combine that with a double finger, I would have been in so much trouble.

Christmas would have been, my Christmas would have been canceled. All my gifts would have been returned, thrown right in a dumpster in front of me. I would have really had to pay the piper for that, but I love that one.

And now I gotta know what DVD it is though. And so that’s like, you lose two points for not telling us what DVD she was dreaming of.

One year for Christmas, my cousins and I were like extremely evil. And every year, my grandma and grandpa would host a Christmas party either on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day.

And a bunch of the extended randoms were there that were somehow related to us, but we had no idea who they were. And they were probably just like our parents, like cousins or something.

And one year in particular, we thought it would be funny to like, you know, put Christmas fudge in the toilet. And one of my cousins left the fudge on a couch on purpose.

And they said in relatives that we didn’t know one of them was wearing white pants. And yeah, she sat in the fudge on the couch. Yeah, I mean, we would, we’d ended up telling, I think the family long afterwards that that was us.

But yeah, watch out, kids could be a little shit. But it was really funny at the time. And I would be mortified to have that happen to me.

So anyway.

Look, you don’t have to explain yourself to me. I understand why this is funny. It’s very funny to make it look like somebody has pooped their pants or peed their pants when you’re a kid and maybe even when you’re not a kid.

I would have found that so hysterical. And I also think that when you are an adult and you make the choice to wear white pants, you are taking on a serious risk and you need to be aware of all of your surroundings.

You cannot sit on a couch in white pants without checking and anticipating for not just fudge that a child may have left on the couch cushion, but really anything, anything that could leave a mark on those white pants.

And in fact, I believe if as an adult, you choose to wear white pants, you should understand that you’re standing for the duration. While your white pants are on, you are in a standing situation. You’re hovering.

You might lean casually against a counter that you’ve definitely checked for moisture, stains, other things like that. But mostly you’re standing. Mostly you’re standing.

And so, you were doing a prank and you got people pranked. And honestly, one of the things about me is I will always, always, always take your side, even if you text in or call in and say that you put fudge, your grandma’s fudge.

In a toilet’s pretty funny. A couch is diabolical. And yet I’m like, well, they were children.

It was fudge. And what are you doing wearing white pants anyways? Come on, come on.

All right.

We, we’ve got more.

We’ve got more. Let’s take a little break here and we’ll be back with some more Happyish Holiday stories of Holidays Gone Wrong.

All right, this is, we’re starting out with a strong one that says accidental drugging.

My birthday is Christmas Eve, and my sister’s is January 2nd. Oh, that’s two Capricorns. I love this.

So my parents typically had family over around Christmas to celebrate both our birthdays.

I would like to just say that as a Christmas birthday myself, I’m December 28th, my dad was December 29th, one thing that my parents did right, they would not combine birthday celebrations with Christmas. Yes, it was inconvenient to everybody else.

No, nobody really cared about my birthday except them, but my dad took great pains to make sure that my birthday and Christmas were separated, and also that my birthday and his birthday were separated.

Except for when I was 17, we shared a birthday cake, but I remember thinking that was cool and that was fine, but as a kid, kid, very separate.

I’m not judging your parents, I’m just saying, if you happen to have a Christmas time baby, just be aware of that.

Okay.

One year, and this is on home video. Why are you guys referencing home videos that you’re not sending us, is the question. I had a particularly nasty cold around the time of the party, so my mom gave me some cold medicine.

Unfortunately, with everything going on, having a ton of family over, managing the house and us four kids, she forgot how much she gave me, so she gave me more.

So on the video, we’re singing Happy Birthday to me and my sister, and I’m high as a kite and in another dimension.

I don’t know how old this person is, but I gotta say that this has got to be a child of the 80s and 90s, because we also, we were, they were giving out cold medicine willy-nilly.

It’s, we were, we were often, I believe, getting too much, getting too much of, of the good stuff, which was not good stuff. It all tasted like, for some reason, grape. And I can still taste it to this day.

And it’s not grape. It just tastes like purple-burning medicine. You’re not fooling anybody when you put grape on a cough medicine bottle.

We know what a grape tastes like. It’s not that. When I turned 16, we were having family over for Christmas Eve before going to Mass.

And my mom asked me to make the brandy slush. Oh, pulled out the church cookbook for the recipe and everything. Church cookbook recipe for brandy slush?

This is the Midwest, baby. Our local priest at the time was a younger guy, very, very nice. So he often got invited to things.

And my mom thought having him for dinner before he gave Mass was a good idea. Those church ladies don’t mess around with their slush, apparently, because this recipe called for two bottles of brandy. Let’s just say father really enjoyed the slush.

When we got to Mass and sat in our pew, we could see his face was a little red. By the time we got to the sermon, his speech was a touch slurred.

I don’t know if anyone else who wasn’t at our house suspected anything, but we noticed and started giggling. Funniest Mass ever. Sometimes you got to spice up the Mass and get father just a little tipsy on a Brandy Slush.

I’m going to now have to look up a Brandy Slush recipe because I don’t really know a lot of alcohol drinks. Brandy Slush. I mean, slush in itself is, I like the sound of a slush.

Oh, Wisconsin Brandy Slush. Here we go. Graciously cold and wonderfully refreshing.

Oh, it’s like a smoothie.

This can’t be right.

Green tea.

I don’t think people were using green tea.

Green tea, boiling water, sugar, two cups of brandy, two bottles.

Oh, boy.

Okay.

Brandy slash easy make ahead. Okay, this is Ubiquitous Wisconsin Recipe. Okay, they’re saying green or black tea, nine cups of water, two cups of brandy.

Honey, baby, I think that you, I think you misread it. Two bottles of brandy is quite a lot different than two cups of brandy.

Frozen lemonade concentrate, frozen orange juice concentrate, a quarter cup of lemon lime soda, and then what do you blend it? Oh, oh, okay.

No, you combine it all, put it in the freezer so it freezes together, then you scoop the slush onto a rocks glass, pour the lemon lime soda into the glass. That sounds so good even without the brandy.

That might be like a nice little, a nice little treat. Okay, I learned a lot. I learned a lot in this episode.

Okay.

Happyish Holidays, it’s not that bad, and I still laugh every Christmas when I think about it.

Filed for divorce mid-year, finalized in October, December rolls around and my now ex-sister-in-law sends the invite for a standard family Christmas Eve party at their house.

I respond kindly with, While I appreciate the invite, for obvious reasons, I won’t be attending and you don’t have to continue to invite me. Thank you for your kindness, though.

Which starts a flurry of emails, like my brother-in-law, her husband, my ex’s brother, responds with, I am unaware of any obvious reasons. Apparently, no one informed his side of the family that we got a divorce. None of them knew.

Not his dad, not his brothers, no one. So while mourning that shitshow, I also got to break the news to his whole family six months after the fact, and might I add, by the way, on e-mail. Good times.

Again, not the worst holiday disaster, but really demonstrates how not to holiday during divorce. Honestly, this demonstrates why you got a divorce.

It demonstrates why you got a divorce, and it’s also not the first story I’ve heard where a presumable woman has to tell their ex’s family that they’re getting a divorce because their ex just can’t do it or just hasn’t done it, or was going to get

around to it but never did. So truly a happiest holiday to you because you no longer have to take care of that person in that way.

That is so wild.

To reply an email, I’m actually unaware of any obvious reasons. I’m like, oh, no one told you we’re getting a divorce? I also love that happening just on email.

Like, is everyone CC’d? Great. Thank you.

Let’s get everybody informed all at once, and you might want to send some follow-ups to your brother, and ask him why he didn’t tell you we’re getting a divorce, and it’s been finalized. It’s done. We are actually officially divorced.

Wild.

Okay.

My worst holiday story is that I had my boyfriend’s family over for Christmas morning to do breakfast and presents a few years ago.

Grandpa came too. Everything was going great until it was time to open presents. Grandpa gives me his gift, a $50 gift card.

A $50 gift card for Victoria’s Secret.

A place I don’t shop at to begin with, but also why is my boyfriend’s grandfather giving this to me?

Okay. So you invite your whole boyfriend’s family over, including his grandpa. Boyfriend’s grandpa gives you a $50 gift card.

Very generous.

To Victoria’s Secret. Little suspect.

I said, thank you. Already uncomfortable. And his response was, I’ll make it 100 if you let me come with you to try things on.

I tried to laugh it off because I didn’t want to be rude to grandpa, but man, thankfully, my boyfriend and his brother said something to him in my defense. Talk about a worst holiday in my own home. We, like, let us, let us pray.

Let us pray together.

Let us get the priest drunk on Brandy’s Lush and let us pray that we are over the era, if not at the end of the era, at least, if we are not yet over out of this era, let us be near the end of the era where weird old men can say gross things to you

simply because they’re old. Like, just using their oldness as a shield to be like, it’s okay that I’m a perv and I’m being deeply inappropriate and, you know, sexualizing you in front of a group of people.

So also, you know, basically trying to humiliate you because I’m old. It’s really not. That’s not cool.

That’s not cool. And I really hope your boyfriend was straight up mean to his grandmother. Like, he should be embarrassed by that.

Like, that should embarrass him because he went to the mall. This man had to go to the mall. Sorry, I’m not mad at you.

I’m not mad at you.

I’m mad for you.

This man had to go to the mall, get a gift card to Victoria Secret. He thought of this, too. It’s like that this is premeditated perv behavior.

He says, I’m going to get a gift for my grandson’s girlfriend who’s inviting me into her home. Where am I going to go? I’m going to take myself to the mall.

I’m going to look through the mall. I’m going to go to Victoria Secret. I’m going to say I’m going to spend $50 here.

Okay. He perused the goods. He knew what $50 would get you.

And then he gave it to you and he said he had to make it weirder. Like he knew in his heart that was weird. And he was like, but that was like the appeal to him.

So anyways, you know, rest wherever to that grandpa.

Okay.

This one I’m excited about because I love a ruiner.

As a ruiner, as a person who has ruined a great many things on purpose and accidentally, I’ve ruined things by simply caring too much and being a little bit too much for many people in my life and then having just too many feelings for them as well.

I love something that says this is the story of how I ruined my family’s Christmas gift exchange tradition and regret nothing. Here we go. I remember my extended family’s holiday gathering fondly for my first couple years.

The gift exchange was the highlight. All 20-something of us gathered in one pristine suburban living room where upwards of 50 gifts were opened one by one for maximum enjoyment. It was hours of sheer materialistic pleasure.

As I grew up, I began to pick up on the tensions that ran through the adult relationships in my family.

It takes a while, but we always get there, baby.

Our holiday gathering was a unique opportunity for dysfunction to express itself. The elements of tradition that were held constant, like the gift exchange, were like measuring sticks for unresolved issues and relational chaos. One example.

The gift exchange had always been separated by generation, with a cousin’s gift exchange and a parent’s gift exchange. As the cousins got older, there was an experiment with including them in the parent’s gift exchange. No, no, no, no, no.

Stepping in here to say no, generational is where it’s at. Generational is where it’s at. And I’ll tell you why.

I don’t want my nieces and nephews, whom I care for and want to take care of. I don’t ever want them to get me something. I want to give them, and I also want them to have that relationship among each other.

You know, no, you’re not, you’re not an adult simply because you become 18. Like we will never be like true peers. I will always be your aunt.

I will always be Auntie Nora, and you will always be my little babies, who I will baby, but we won’t be like exchanging gifts like that. Okay, anyways. I was a broke student.

This is also the problem, right? I was a broke student shopping for an aunt and uncle I didn’t know well. Doi, like it’s not, it’s not your niece and nephew’s job to like know you well enough to get you a gift.

It’s like your job as the adult in the relationship, even if they’re 18, it’s like know them, see them, get them something that they need. Why would you want a college student to spend their hard earned money on you?

I wouldn’t.

Apparently my gift was disappointing. That’s such a bummer. And first of all, you could never disappoint me with a gift.

You never could because I, being thought of is like so sweet to me. And I’m actually gonna make a caveat. I don’t like to just be gifted for the sake of gifting, right?

So like, I don’t need that. I don’t need a gift. But if you, I would never ever ever let my disappointment register, especially not with somebody like my nieces, my kids.

Ew, no.

Okay.

I don’t think it was the only dud either. The cross generation gifting experiment was not repeated and the disappointed expectations were never discussed. Baby, baby, baby, we are talking here about families.

And should we ever discuss our disappointments? No, we should pack them away, hold them against each other, wield them like invisible weapons that we press to each other’s necks and say, should I push? Make one move.

I will push and I will hold. And you will know, you will bleed out about the gift that your daughter gave me at the at the at the gift exchange years ago that I was disappointed about and never never could could discuss openly.

The final year of the gift exchange, my dad and uncle announced that the cousins would do a gift exchange and gift cards were not allowed. These had to be real gifts, meaningful shit or whatever. I protested this rule.

The cousins were scattered throughout the country in different life stages, and we didn’t all know each other well. What we could all agree on was we liked shopping at Best Buy.

What Best Buy employee took the time to write this piece of beautifully sponsored content and submit it to me, because you got me baby and now I want to go to Best Buy. In past years, after the gift exchange, we’d take our gift cards and go shopping.

That’s the real Christmas, Nora. I honestly have to agree and I think that’s really lovely, especially to all go, go spend that money together. That’s fun.

My protests were dismissed and it was reiterated, no gift cards, that’s final. So when it was time for the gift exchange, the cousins gathered in a circle.

While my dad and uncle watched, each of us took a $20 bill from our pocket and handed it to the person we’d drawn for the exchange that year. Not a gift card in sight, just cold, hard cash.

My uncle said to my dad, it’s like they put on a play about how they don’t respect us. Astute observation, uncle.

Yeah, you might be picking up on something.

What you’re picking up on is the fact that you also didn’t respect them. You didn’t respect these kids and what they wanted. Okay, we didn’t respond because we were on our way to Best Buy.

There were no more gift exchanges, though, come to think of it, maybe I just wasn’t invited. That’s a beautiful, beautiful, ruiners story. And I love this, thank you, thank you.

Perfect, perfect. Also, you know what I could encourage you to do again is get your cousins on a gift exchange again. Now it’ll be more fun.

Now it’ll be more fun.

Okay.

My Happiest Holidays story is not a very long or extraordinary story, but it sure does frustrate me.

Am I the A-hole?

The year is 2011.

My family draws names for gift exchange, and I get my cousin Rick. Fast forward to Christmas, I forget his gift. The following year, I got a text from my mom stating they drew names again, and I wasn’t there for it, so they drew me.

Of course, I get Rick again.

Who’s in charge?

Who’s in charge? Again, fast forward to Christmas, and this time, I did not forget. I brought a present for everyone, including the name draw recipient.

Lo and behold, there was no name draw, and they all tricked me because I forgot last year’s present for Rick. Good joke made me cry in front of my whole family due to embarrassment. Thanks for listening, Lydia.

That’s mean.

That’s mean.

That’s mean. And look, I know I came, I come from a family that’s our currency is like joking, making fun of each other.

I’ve made like a conscious effort in raising my own family to move away from that kind of humor because it’s only funny if everyone thinks it’s funny.

So it can’t be a joke if the joke is on one person and that person is being singled out and that person is being embarrassed and being embarrassed in front of the people that they love and nobody, you are not the A-hole, I will tell you that much.

And nobody forgets a gift on purpose. That’s why it’s called forgetting and not leaving it behind on purpose.

We don’t do those things on purpose, but this was intentional and it was kind of meant to rub your nose in something that it didn’t need to be rubbed in because you already felt bad.

And I would be so embarrassed and I would cry and I would have left and then I would have I’m in therapy now, I would have left. I probably would have driven around, I would have rage driven, baby.

I probably would have bought a pack of cigarettes, smoked them while driving around, and then I would have not spoken to people for quite a long time. I don’t know how old you were when that happened, but in 2011, I was, I don’t even know, 29?

29, right, about to be 29. I was about to be 29 Christmas of 2011, and that would have hurt my feelings too. That would have hurt my feelings now too.

So no, you are not the A-hole. Horrifying Christmas. I was given a Cabbage Patch doll when I was three at Christmas.

This would be 1984. Her name was Elbertina Cashia. She was my end-all be-all.

I took her everywhere. She was my baby and my best friend. Parents then learned Cabbage Patch dolls were demonic, quote unquote.

At nine or 10, I had to set fire to and watch Elbertina Cashia burn. Merry Christmas. You win.

This wasn’t a contest until this very moment, but I believe you win. The Satanic Panic really did a number on many people.

And I think the idea that Cabbage Patch babies were demonic, and I believe this was simply because they grew in Cabbage Patches. That’s why they were demonic. I think there was something about that, I gotta Google it.

Cabbage Patches demonic.

It’s like, what do you tell this? Is the stork demonic? Cabbage Patch doll, demonic.

Cabbage Patch dolls, jeez.

Demonic, why are they demonic? Let’s find out. Oh, this is from a homesteading forum, which also claims that Cabbage Patch dolls, My Little Pony, Care Bears and numerous other toys are demonic.

So something’s happened in Christian forums, demons and inanimate objects. Okay, yeah, well, yeah, demonic, demonic.

Okay, I guess one year during middle school, my mom got tired of paying for all the shit parents pay for because instead of gifts, she just wrote on note cards, things that she had paid for, like contact lenses and soccer do’s and put them in boxes

and wrapped those up. In our stocking, she just put used pens and scissors she found around the house. It was a Christmas we never forgot, that’s for sure.

That is such a cry for help.

Oh my god, that is so, dude, having, okay, I am sorry that this happened to you because yes, having children and making Christmas special and being able to afford Christmas is very stressful and it’s very stressful especially if money is tight and

also supporting your children is your job. Supporting your children is your job, making sure that they have contact lenses and soccer juice is your job as a parent and stuffing their stockings with used pens and scissors is so mean and also to me,

that’s a woman on the brim. That is a woman on the absolute brink, that is a mother who is on the edge. Very curious if you could talk to her about it now, what she would say, because I’m sure she would be like, oh my god, I’m so sorry.

Or maybe she wouldn’t, but that is, that’s not as dark as a demonic doll, but that’s pretty dark. You didn’t deserve that. You didn’t ask to be born.

You didn’t ask to need contact lenses or soccer dues. Why aren’t supports free for kids? I mean, come on, get a grip.

You deserve more than pencils and scissors and I’m sorry.

That’s rough.

Geez, Louise. Okay, this one is, this one’s also rough, okay? This one’s also rough.

My brother Ryan ruined the holidays in 2019 by dying. Very big rune on 1223 of a drug overdose. His birthday is 1220 and his funeral was 1227.

So we lovingly refer to that timeframe as sad week. This is why the Happyish Holidays phrase exists.

This is why the Happyish Holidays episodes exist is because some of us were forced to light our cabbage patch styles on fire and some of us, our mothers had just a breakdown and some of us, our brothers died the week of Christmas.

And everybody, you know, has something, has something that they are carrying through this season. But back to the message, in the years since, my parents and I have tried to find happiness in the grief wherever we can.

This year, we will be hosting the fourth annual Ryan’s Rebirthday Party on 1223. I’m going to cry about that.

With 35 to 40 of our closest friends and family, it may not be for everyone, but we found it especially helpful to be surrounded by people who love us and loved him on what would otherwise be a very sad day.

It’s still sad, but at least this lets some of the joy creep in. Thanks for reading, Kate. 1223, I’m going to be thinking of Ryan’s Rebirthday.

I wasn’t invited, so I won’t be there with you, but that’s really beautiful and I love…

This is what we were talking about in the introduction, too, is you can make this season whatever you want it to be, even when it’s not what you wanted it to be, even when the world decides to change itself, reconfigure itself, and you are just fully

in a version of your life that you never wanted, you can invent a new holiday. Now 1223 is not Christmas Eve Eve, now it’s Ryan’s Rebirthday, and now we are getting together two days before Christmas with the people who loved him, and we are

celebrating that way. That is so beautiful, that is so inspiring, and guess what? You might not get there. The first year, sounds like Kate and her family didn’t, but you can get there.

You can get there, let some time pass, and treat yourself and your family, especially you though, so nicely, and let this season and this week be whatever you need it to be.

Okay, so the holiday season has never been ruined by this, but my mother-in-law of 26 years has never spelled my name correctly. 26 years? Never spelled your name correctly?

I’m taking that as mother-in-laws around the world, listen up. Get in, get in here, get in here. You got one job, you got one job as a mother-in-law, and I’m an aspiring mother-in-law someday, okay?

I hope to someday be a mother-in-law. I hope to be the kind of mother-in-law that they write songs about. Nobody’s writing songs about mother-in-laws yet.

When I’m a mother-in-law, they will. You have kind of one job, which is just accept this new person into your family and then let them make their own family and be nice and be supportive and spell her name right.

It kind of goes without saying, nobody’s gonna list that in your roles and responsibilities. Spell her name right. She’s Melissa with one S.

I’ve gotten one text from her. I can spell Melissa with one S. Why are you spelling it Melissa with two S’s?

Melissa with two L’s, one S. Melissa with, Ma-lissa, M-a-l-i-s-s-a, or the best, Malishwa, okay? Why is that hard for you?

Okay, rant over, rant over. She always gives me a card with a little cash in it and writes my name on the envelope, except she doesn’t write your name, Melissa. She writes someone else’s name, okay?

Spelling people’s names right is something that we can all do. Are we going to make mistakes sometimes? Sure.

You add an H on my name, will I be mad? I will be. Will I get over it?

Eventually. Will I, you know, does sometimes auto-correct change a name? Yeah, but no one’s auto-correcting your cards that you’re writing out.

So just spell the name correctly. You had 26 years, lady. 26 years, you know Melissa spells it with one S.

Come on, come on.

Okay, whoo.

Nice cleansing breath and let’s move on. It was a Christmas when I was around 10, that I learned that I needed to minimize myself and my desires in my family.

My sisters always drew names for small Christmas gifts under $20 to exchange, but our mom helped select presents. I asked for a bright, big, funky watch. It was the 90s.

I was super excited to see a small watch-sized box under the tree. When it came time to open gifts, I was heartbroken to find a dainty gold-tone watch inside. It didn’t even have numbers on it.

Why?

Why would you give a kid the watch they don’t want, but also a watch without numbers?

It’s hard enough to learn how to tell time with the numbers. Now imagine trying to tell time with no numbers, just a blank face. You want me to just guesstimate what those hands are pointing at?

I don’t think so. I’m sure my face fell. When I expressed frustration and was not enthusiastic about the gift, I was scolded and sent to my room.

I know we need to learn the art of being thankful for gifts, but as a 10-year-old wanting something fun, getting a you’ll grow into it gift was a letdown. Also that year, I discovered that I had a metal sensitivity.

So no, I never did wear that watch. I try to let my kids be kids. A cheap, fun thing is just that.

Not all gifts will last forever. And honestly, not even will a gold tone watch, like that gold tone is going to wear off. You are exactly right.

You’re allowed to have feelings, especially as a kid. You’re allowed to feel disappointed.

Like yes, we need to learn to manage those feelings and manage the social graces, yes, but you don’t just do that by bypassing a kid’s feelings and experiences and being like, you actually can’t have this feeling because you are only allowed to feel

grateful. You have to feel grateful that I got you something that you don’t want, and that’s going to give you a little rash. And if I may, I think that you should go on eBay right now, find a nice chunky 90s watch.

I bet you wanted a swatch baby, and so did I. And I think you should get yourself a big loud watch right now. Okay, this one’s really set in a scene.

It’s the late 90s in the Midwest. My cousins were the feral children who somehow made it to adulthood. One Christmas, my brilliant aunt and uncle decided their three children, all on ADHD medication, needed blow darts.

The two older boys unwrapped the weapons and immediately ran to our grandparents’ basement to try them out. A half-hearted, be careful, escape my aunt’s lips, as my youngest cousin and I followed the boys downstairs.

Every train wreck needs an audience. They blow darts at the dartboard for about 10 minutes, quickly bored with the low stakes.

They then convinced my little cousin, she’s about five years old and eager to please her big brothers, to stand in front of the dartboard holding the smallest teddy bear they could find in the toy box.

She’s holding it with both hands right in front of her chest. I don’t remember which brother blew the dart, but I do remember turning away because I couldn’t watch and immediately hearing a scream and wailing.

I whip around and the boys are whispering shh and holding her mouth closed, but it’s too late. All the adults run down and see a blow dart sticking, sticking out of my cousin’s finger.

Oh my gosh.

Sticking out of my cousin’s finger. They got pretty damn close to the bear, just not close enough. They all spent the rest of the night in the ER, and my family spent the whole next week judging the hell out of them for it.

No sympathy from my judgy Catholic parents. My little cousin was fine, and while I love to brag about her now as a three-time Olympian, I also love to tell this story, Happyish Holidays. You know, oh boy, yeah.

I’m giving our children blow darts.

You’re on set.

I’m giving them blow darts, and we’re gonna put them in the basement in the Midwest. Holidays, there’s an immediate just stratification that happens at holidays. Like, it’s not enough to have a kid’s table.

You need a different part of the home for children to be in, and it’s too cold to go outside, so you will go to the basement. And what happens in the basement?

It can’t always stay in the basement, because when you blow a blow dart into your five-year-old sister’s finger, other people are going to know.

And I can see in my head the immediate concern that her brothers have for themselves as they rush over, cover her mouth, and are like, don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry, because I’ve been that big sibling. I’ve been that big sibling.

I’ve been that little sister, being like, you want me to touch the electric fence? I would love to. I would love to.

And I’ve been the older sister who was like, trust me. Don’t trust me. Don’t.

No, no, no, no, no, no. And I’ve seen this in my own kids, too. Being like, shh, don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry.

Don’t cry, we’ll all get in trouble. No, you’re getting in trouble because you blew a blow dart into your sister’s finger on Christmas. Okay?

Those are all of our Happyish Holidays stories, but I need to say one more time, for anybody who needs to hear it, and maybe that is you, that you are not obligated to meet this season with holiday cheer. It is okay.

It is okay if you cannot muster one single ho ho ho.

It is okay if you feel more like the Grinch before his heart grew three sizes today, than you do the Grinch after his heart I think became a normal-sized operating heart, and then he was invited to major spoilers for the Grinch to follow.

It’s okay.

You are not legally obligated to make the most of any day, but certainly not a holiday. This might be the year that you sit them out. This might be the year that you start something new.

This might be the year that you stop doing something you don’t want to do anymore. But wherever you are, however you are, I wish you whatever holiday makes sense given the circumstances. Happyish Holidays, everybody.

I’m Nora McInerny. This is Thanks For Asking. Thank you to Marcel Malekebu and Grace Berry for helping pull this episode together.

We will see you guys next year. We’ll see you guys next year. There are lots of bonus episodes and ad-free episodes over on the Substack that is linked in our episode description.

And I think in every episode description, you could join monthly, you can join annually, or you can kick in a little more. And become a supporting producer and get your name in the credits.

But before we do that, I also have to thank Geoffrey Lamar Wilson for our opening theme music. We’ve linked to his albums in the episode description and my young son Q, who made this closing music that you are hearing right now.

Production for our opening song is from Secret Audio. We’re going to link to that album too. That’s my best friend.

And the lyrics were by me, Nora McInerny. Who a lot of people are calling the Weird Al of this podcast. Lot of people are saying that.

All right, so big thanks to our supporting producers, Joy Heising, KM., Nancy Duff, Jenny Medein, Jordan Jones, Sheila, Kathleen Langerman, Ben, Jess, Michelle Toms, Tom Stockburger, Jen, Beth Derry, Stacey DeMoro, Emily Ferrizo, Stephanie Johnson,

Faye Barons, Amanda, Sarah Garifo, Jennifer McDagle, all caps, Elia Filiz-Milan, Lindsay Lund, Renee Kepke, Chelsea Cernick, Car Pan, LGS, all caps, Stacey Wilson, Courtney McCown, Kaylee Sakai, Mary Beth Berry, that’s my high school gym teacher, Joe

Theodisopoulos, Madd Abia Rose, Elizabeth Berkley, Kim F, Melody Swinford, Val Lauren Hanna, Katie Jessica Latexier, Crystal Mann, Lisa Piven, Kate Lyon, Christina Sarah David, Kate Byerjohn, Erin John, Joy Pollock, Crystal Jennifer Pavelka, Jess