Ouch. Don't know if this is relevant, but I can share a couple things:
Because holidays are so nuts, we ended up inventing a few of our own that coincide with the season (no, nothing like Festivus!).
My favorite day during the Thanksgiving/Christmas season is our annual tree decorating party. Just the wife and kids and myself. Get the tree, decorate, cook all the special ritual foods (non-tradition shrimp on the grill, whatever wierdness we can throw in to make it different, and our own). We peel shrimp together, make pigs in a blanket, eat that junk and watch A Charlie Brown Christmas and A Christmas Story after the tree's decorated. Then we watch A Christmas Story about a hundred more times until New Years...then we put it away until next year. That's my favorite day, nothing else holds a candle to it, so I never feel "gipped" at all the usual family nonsense cause that's just someplace I have to show up and be polite (although I truly love my in-laws).
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. -- Inigo Montoya, 'The Princess Bride'
