As childless adults living far from our family members, Christmases at Chez Macey are pretty chill nowadays. That’s not to say we don’t commit full force to the Christmas spirit; both John and I are huge fans of the holidays. We always drive out to look at lights. We’re also members of our church choir and spend a lot of time singing in the services. We obviously love the movies, and we also love the food & drink, the music, and the gifting. We only really buy for each other, but we tend to go all out. Last year, I bought John something like 10 Rick & Morty-themed gifts. I took the week off and we spent days listening to new records, playing new games, and wrapping up the season with relaxation and together-time.
When I was growing up, things were a bit different. All my family lived in Mississippi, but my mother’s side and father’s sides were in different parts of the state. My dad was a minister also, and Christmas is one of the biggest times of the year for churches. Once school was out, Christmas became very busy for us. We usually delegated a December Saturday to spend Christmas with my mother’s family, and that was always my favorite. I was very close with my grandma, who we called Mama Wrenn, and she would spend days putting together a huge meal. All the kids got gifts from everyone, and the adults would draw names to buy one nice gift. After the gifts were unwrapped and dinner eaten, we would all congregate in the kitchen around the big square table and talk for hours, or if the weather was nice, we’d go out for walks in the woods or sit on the big swing in the front yard. When I think of Christmas, the memories at Mama Wrenn’s are often the ones that come to me first.
We would also drive to spend Christmas with my dad’s side of the family, and the experiences there could vary wildly from a small, fairly quiet few days with just my Papaw and step-grandmother Granny Joyce, or the house could be packed to the rafters with people. The times when Granny’s many children and their families were also visiting, I would spend a lot of time outside playing with cousins to escape the crush inside the house. At night, all the kids would set up our sleeping bags in the living room and pretend to all be camping out. Some very special years, my Aunt Pat and her family would come home from wherever they were living. My Uncle Scott was in the Navy, and they lived in Virginia, Hawaii, and Guam at different times, so we didn’t see them often. Sometimes we got really neat presents though; Aunt Pat went to Hong Kong one year and sent us Chinese-style embroidered shirts and pants and gave me a pearl bracelet with a silver clasp. As a kid whose favorite book was a big old full-color Atlas, I could not have been more thrilled to have a gift from the other side of the globe. When Pat and family were visiting, the adults would spend hours around the dining room table playing pinochle. (I thought it was “pea-knuckle.”) I enjoyed just sitting near them and watching everyone have so much fun. Granny Joyce was always in the kitchen cooking something that smelled delicious, and if I needed some quiet time, I would grab a Reader’s Digest Condensed Book from the huge collection in the den and go read in a corner.
When my parents got divorced, Christmas got more complicated. I would have characterized my life up to age 12 as celebrating three Christmases a year – Mama Wrenn’s, Papaw’s, and Christmas Eve and Day back home with the five of us. But after my parents got divorced and remarried various times, this number started to increase and become unwieldy. I now had Christmas with my dad, Christmas with my mom, Christmas with Mama Wrenn, Christmas with Papaw, and Christmas with one or two stepfamilies. It was nice to see people, eat family dinners, and open gifts, but the travel could be a lot to deal with. I didn’t have to handle the scheduling myself, thankfully, but I’m guessing that was a bear unto itself. Generally, we spent Christmas Day at my main home with my mom and stepdad. We’d have the Christmas Saturday with Mama Wrenn, and probably another Christmas Saturday with Papaw and my dad, before going to spend a few days with my dad. Once I was old enough to drive, I ended up being the chauffeur, tooling around the state with my sisters in tow, trying to hit every location for at least one day. By the time school started back (often frustratingly close to my birthday), I was exhausted from all the traveling and socializing, plus church commitments, shopping, wrapping, and the other assorted Christmas activities.
One year, my mom and stepdad decided to vacation during Christmas week. My sisters were living with my dad at the time, and I would be home, but planned to drive up and spend actual Christmas Day with Mama Wrenn, so it seemed like a fine enough plan to mix things up and try something different for a change. I’d usually be out on the road driving most of the time anyway. Mama and Joel would be back on December 26, so we would have our regular Christmas just a day or two late. Unfortunately, things didn’t work out as planned. We had a huge ice storm on Christmas Eve. The roads were closed and the power went out, and I ended up spending Christmas Day alone in the dark. I’m not going to say it was my best Christmas ever (although if this was a movie, it would have somehow been), but it actually wasn’t as bad as it sounds. I had light during the day and spent a lot of time reading and listening to music on my battery-powered boombox. At night, I did more reading by candlelight. My Christmas dinner was made up of non-perishable snack foods, and for once, I got a lot of sleep. I’m sure I talked to imaginary friends and danced around the living room too. You have to do something to stay sane when you’re totally alone with no television, phone, or light. When Mama and Joel got back the next day, they were totally horrified that I’d had to spend Christmas alone. My mom loudly and frequently swore for days that she’d never take a vacation for Christmas again, even though I tried my best to convince her I’d had the opportunity to relax for once and wasn’t mad.
The fact is, having a Christmas by myself actually made me appreciate the chaos in a different way. I tend to be an introvert and a homebody, so the wildness around the Christmas season had burnt me out, and I wasn’t focused on the right things anymore. I was spending a lot of time alone driving all over the state to see people, and then speeding through visits to get to the next place. But Christmas is not about checking off all the boxes to make sure you’ve completed them (even for a completionist checklist fiend like me). It’s about spending time with the people you care about.
This is the reason I quite like Four Christmases. I certainly relate to all the crazy family stuff in the movie, since my family can be a bit dramatic and offbeat like both of Brad’s parents and Kate’s mother’s side. I can relate to Kate and Brad wanting to disengage from the chaos, but in reality, they have just swapped one kind of chaos for another, and they’re convincing themselves that they’re healthier and happier for avoiding their issues with their families (rather than dealing with them). They don’t spend their free time relaxing or engaging in any meaningful pursuits; they take class after class and go on trips packed to the brim with activities. Brad and Kate are not interested in engagement but in distraction; at multiple times in the movie, we see that for all the time they spend together, they don’t actually know each other very well, at least on the inside. Only after they have the chance to do four Christmases with their various family branches do they both begin to understand that what’s missing from their lives is not activity, but quality time.
Finding quality time with family can be easier said than done. Kate and Brad both have family members that exhibit varying levels of toxicity, and although it is played for comedy, no one should have to force themselves to spend time with people who make them uncomfortable. When Kate goes to her father’s house and observes how he has been able to put aside some of the negativity in his relationship with her mother for the sake of spending time with their grandchild, she begins to understand how it might be possible to change things, at least enough to spend a nice holiday evening with family a few times a year. (Of course, this is undercut with the last scene, where we see that Kate and Brad have gone on to start their own family without telling anyone. But again, this seems more for the sake of a laugh than for story.) Overall, there is a sense that Kate and Brad realize they need a change and will work on their issues instead of ignoring them and distracting themselves.
John and I don’t usually get to experience big family holidays since we moved to the west coast—not by choice but by necessity since travel is so expensive and the pandemic has made it difficult (if not impossible). So it has been many years since I’ve experienced a chaotic, raucous holiday with kids everywhere, trying to make a huge dinner for twenty people stuffed into a double-wide trailer or small house, catching up with people you haven’t seen since last year (while everyone is talking all at once). At some point, I’ll travel home to my mom’s and do it again; now that my grandma is gone, Mama has instituted the December Saturday Christmas with our branch of the family—my sisters, their kids, and their kids’ kids. Plus my stepdad, whose siblings live next door to them and have their own extended families home for Christmas too. I look forward to embracing that chaos again one year, but until then, John and I will focus on our own version of Christmas, spending quality time slowing down, relaxing, playing board games, reading, and listening to music. And maybe starting a family Zoom call tradition to at least get a taste of the chaos.
Comfort Films 13: Four Christmases (released December 24, 2021)
