Every year there’s a new slew of articles and news segments about how to survive the holidays. They share similar titles like ‘Tips for Handling the Hectic Holidays’ or ‘Harried Holidays? Ten Steps for Doing More in Less Time.’ There are screaming advertisements competing for our attention and our money. You can’t turn around without being confronted by recipes that need crafting, gifts that everybody ‘must have,’ memories we must make, pictures we must take, amazing deals we must buy—but the guilt always comes free.
There are plenty of reasons why this season can be difficult for anyone—missing friends and family from estrangement or death, physical or emotional separation from loved ones, the financial burdens of meeting real or imagined or implied expectations, social anxiety, too many to-dos, life changes causing tradition changes that are just hard. From looming and life-changing, to mundane and endless—it’s just a lot.
The average person can’t change the circumstances of everyone they meet in a day, but there are some things we can all do to make the hectic pace of this time of year less soul-sucking for all of us. Easy things, free things, things kids can do—things kids can see us doing.
Return your grocery cart to the thing. I don’t know what the ‘thing’ is called but I know how to return my cart and make sure that the guy in a hurry to get diapers on his way home to relieve his wife from the newborn that hasn’t let her put him down all day has a clear parking spot to get in and out fast.
Tell the person after you that the toilet paper in that stall is almost out, then tell a manager, so that the girl on her first date doesn’t get stuck waiting on someone else to come into the bathroom to pass her some while she freaks out thinking her really cute date has surely assumed she has something mortifying like ‘tummy troubles’ and will never ask her out again.
When you finish trying on clothes in a dressing room—put them back on the hangers so the 18-year-old clerk has one less thing to do before she heads to the second job she’s working to save for college. And also, because you aren’t a jerk. This applies to when things fall off of hangers while you’re flipping through them—this is the kind of stuff that separates us from animals.
Let people in front of you in traffic (not everybody—let’s not get carried away) and wave that wave that’s Southern Specific when someone lets you in. Try to tell the person you almost merged over on top of that you’re sorry. Slow down so they pass you and do that overly exaggerated mouthing of ‘I’m sorry!’ through the window as they cut their eyes at you. I bet you money they nod in acknowledgment of your apology instead of gunning it and flipping you the bird—and whose day is better when an almost-traffic collision ends that way? Neither of you.
When the horrible, terrible, no-good self-checkout at Kroger is being its awful self and telling everybody that you didn’t bag your bananas or demanding that you put the ranch dressing seasoning packets in the bag before you scan something else—even though you did but this a machine and not as smart as a human and it can’t tell that you put 1/100th of an ounce more weight in the bag like you’re supposed to—don’t take it out on the employee manning the self-checkout area. They didn’t invent these abominations or tell Kroger they should make us all start using them by only having one lane with a human open the whole day. Tell them, ‘Thank you for helping me with this terrible, no-good machine—you made this experience less like having screws driven under my fingernails and I appreciate you.’ Or something like that—improvise as needed.
The next time you are lucky enough to go through a real checkout line, with a real human—thank them. Tell them how much you appreciate how well they do their job. Say something like, ‘I despise the self-checkout line and it pales in comparison to you. I’m sorry it took the implementation of that torture device to make me appreciate how beautifully you do your job and how nice it is to have a person talking to me while I check out. I hope you have a good day.’
Then tell the manager how delightful that human employee made your grocery trip that day. It’s fine to cut your eyes at the self-checkout machines as you roll past with your expertly scanned and bagged groceries—we’re only human, after all. Except for the self-checkout robots.
Look people in the eye throughout the day. The server taking your order would rather be at her daughter’s Christmas program but can’t take off work if she wants Christmas Eve off, so acknowledge her presence as a human with a smile. Get off your cell phone and make eye contact with the convenience store clerk who is ringing up your bottle of water and peanut butter Nabs (lunch of champions) because he just found out he has to work Christmas Day and won’t get to go to his parents’ house until he gets off at 7 p.m. It’s not your fault he has to work but maybe your friendly face will perk him up a bit for the next little while. Ignoring him to continue your cell phone conversation may not darken his day any, but it won’t brighten it either.
If you manage to catch one of the folks delivering all that Amazon to your front door, holler, ‘Thank you!’ as they vault back up into their truck to keep going. They are our heroes when the package we paid an extra $20 in rush shipping for gets there in time, they’re an easy place for blame when it arrives too late—maybe we could make them the recipient of some on-the-go gratitude when we can.
Cut people some slack. The clerk at the gift shop is having a really crummy day because it’s her first Christmas since her dad died and all it took was one song in the car on the way to work to send her emotions spiraling for the day. If she seems distracted when she takes your monogramming order or rings up your total wrong or forgets to give you a receipt—give her the grace you’d want. I’m no stranger to the quick burst of adrenaline that comes with smart, sharp retorts when I know I’m right and somebody else is wrong. But they never last as long as the warmth of forgiveness and generosity given without being asked.
Everybody is in a hurry. Everybody is busy. Nobody wants anything to take longer than it has to—well, except for the self-checkout machines. We are all going and doing and rushing to get to the relaxation part of the holidays. I’m not sure we’re doing it right, though. It seems like we think we have to work ourselves to the bone to deserve the ‘break’ the holidays should give us. Like old iPhone batteries, we have to run ourselves down to last bit of juice before we can recharge. But until we get better at the ‘gotta have it’ and the ‘must do it’ parts—we can all try harder at the ‘not being a jerk’ and ‘small acts of being decent even when it’s not convenient’ parts in the hopes of taking some of the harried and hectic out of the holidays.
Elizabeth Quinn makes her home in Northeast Jackson with her husband Percy and four children.
