When Your Holiday Really Stinks
You’re hosting the holiday get-together. You’ve been working on it for weeks: planning, cleaning, shopping, and baking to set just the right tone. Classy but welcoming. Seasonal but inclusive. Dazzling but comfortable. Everything has to be perfect. The meal. The decor. The conversation. And, of course, it all has to look effortless (hah!). You are The Ultimate Hostess. (Okay, we won’t mention that last moment when the doorbell rang and you madly scooped up everything and threw it into the dishwasher—cleaning supplies, junk mail, dirty socks, the cat…oh, wait!)
I’ve never managed to pull off the Pinterest-perfect gathering, though I’ve worn myself into a ridiculous frazzle trying. But I’ve discovered that somehow, it’s those very imperfect holidays that we recall most fondly. Think back. I bet your most memorable Thanksgiving or Christmas celebration wasn’t when everything went right. Mine sure wasn’t!
Back when I was in college, my parents, siblings, and various significant others gathered for Thanksgiving at my parents’ “vacation” place: a quaint (read “rickety”) 100+-year-old farmhouse in the countryside. With no grocery store nearby, we’d all schlepped in supplies for our feast, which we prepared together in the tiny kitchen. The weather was warm, so with gingham curtains billowing at the open windows, we could hear our citified dogs outside, having a grand time chasing squirrels, deer, roosters—anything that moved.
Suddenly there was an unearthly howl from one of them and a horrible odor started wafting into the dining area, where we’d just sat down to eat.
“P.U.!” my little sister shrieked. “What is that?”
“What’s what?” Dad asked, pausing midway through bite of green beans.
“You can’t smell it?” another sister said. “It smells like…”
“A skunk!” grimaced Mom and I at the same time.
Soon, the truth became abundantly clear to all. The dogs had cornered a skunk into the crawl space under the first floor. We abandoned dinner, opened all the windows, turned on fans, and tried—pre-Google—to figure out how to get the overpowering scent out of the house and the poor dog’s fur. Every corner of the porous old structure was permeated with the most noxious smell: unendurable but inescapable. Home was at least a nine-hour drive away.
After we cleared away the untouched dishes, we gathered in the living room to pose for a group photo in various stages of mock horror, swooning, and nausea, with smelling salts, air freshener spray, and clothes pins for effect.
That photo has faded over the years. The old farmhouse and our parents are gone now. But we still remember and laugh at the stinkiest Thanksgiving ever.
Whether our holiday is quiet or chaotic, comforting or calamitous, we can celebrate that love doesn’t demand perfection. And sometimes, it’s the failures that bind us together most.