Aces Full of Links

Having been in the position of the former, it's depressing as all hell. Now I do the latter and Hubby grudgingly goes along with me :)

Option #2 is a lifelong obligation that surely becomes meaningless after a while. With Option #1, maybe you have a boring childhood, maybe not, but then as an adult you get to choose which customs you do and do not want to observe, and with whom.

OTOH you won't be able to share them with your family, which sucks.

Still, I'd go with #1.

That's a difficult question because it isn't very specific. I think that a lot of our family "traditions," holiday or other, not only made my childhood fun, but also help me through my adulthood. I still get the same feelings, or shadows of them, even though I'm not a child, and they're good feelings. I often wonder how people with unhappy childhoods make it through daily life.

So I would go with number 1, and hopefully my sibling and I would laugh through the suffering. Or seek therapy together.

OTOH, if the traditions were really miserable, against my current beliefs, or just plain sad, (we have a fine tradition of sacrificing the family pig for Christmas), I'm not sure how I'd feel.

Oh, definitely "A." You can choose to celebrate holidays with friends at school, and when you're an adult, you can celebrate what you please.

If you're forced to participate in every damned holiday there is, it would be irritating and you wouldn't really appreciate any of them, so what would be the point?

A!

Hmm... I was going to go with 2 until I read Julie's reply. I was thinking both would be over once you left home but rereading number 2, I realized that they would be hurt even later in life. Still I think I'll go with having holiday traditions over not so I choose 2. You can always come up with some excuse to get out participating if you really want to and if they are hurt by that then that's their problem.

I'm going to go with #2, myself, but it's a tough decision.

I think a wacky over-the-top family is more fun than a bland one.

The reason it's tough is reflected in Julie's response, which is pretty much what I was thinking when I came up with the question. That Julie and her keen powers of analysis!

I'm not so sure you would be able to come up with excuses year after year after year. That would be pretty damned obvious.

Plus, who wants to have to lie all the time?

Phoey. I'm sticking with A. It's like cooking with salt: you can always add more, but you can't reduce what you've already got.

If I grew up in household #2 I'd hate all those holidays now. So for that reason alone I'll choose #1.

I forgot the salt in pancakes once.

Yeah, it wasn't pretty, and no amount of salt on top of them improved the situation.

As James says, it's always interesting to see the assumptions people make. Obviously some of us were scarred by holidays as a child, others had mostly happy memories that we don't think we'd want to live without, or no happy memories that we wish we had, or, well, the possibilities are endless and varied. Let us strive to not scar our children and others. ;-)

I've been in neither situation, and I didn't actually expect people to have experienced them. But that's the fun of the questions: "it's fun to find out."

Of course, one person;s "going overboard" is another person's normal. But it's all in your own preferences.

I guess #2, although neither is very appealing.

I don't recall that James has *ever* offered a truly appealing "would you rather" option, unless you count the lobster bib thing. :-)

It's all about the difficult and unappealing choices.

It's not all flowers and candy!

We're not talking aromatherapy here! (inside joke from Chuck's old quote book)

:)

What kind of flowers, and what kind of candy? I'll need to think about it.

Option A, definitely. You can always change your tradition when you grow up but it is hard to get yourself out of a guilt induced series of traditionas you don't want to participate in anymore without hurting feelings, etc