ACTUALITÉS

What to Do If You’re Dreading a Whole Month at Home for the Holidays

“Happy” “Holidays” 2020 is a series about feeling connected and vaguely festive during the coronavirus pandemic. If you’re someone who lives far away from your family of origin—far enough to usually skip the Thanksgiving trip and just go home for Christmas—this year might be a little different than usual. Flying or driving a long distance for only a few days may not feel worthy of the hassle of getting tested and quarantining for two weeks upon return, not to mention the risk. Enter: your mom’s dream of you coming home for a whole month—Thanksgiving, Christmas, and are you sure you can’t stay for New Year’s? While this plan makes logistical sense (you’ll work remotely; you can save some money), emotionally, it might already feel like a low-humming stress soundtrack in your life, even if the trip is weeks away. Maybe it’s because you haven’t been home for that long since high school, or because you usually have a hard four-day limit when it comes to tolerating your dad’s relentless pessimism, or because you won’t be able to take a breather at your best friend’s house like you usually do. It’s not that you don’t love your family—you just don’t want poor communication patterns or useless arguments to outweigh the good moments. If you just deeply exhaled in agreement, but also genuinely want to go home, here are some things you can do to get yourself ready (without stressing yourself out even more). Pinpoint exactly what you’re worried will happen. You probably already have a vague image of what you reaaaaaaally don’t want to experience when you’re home. It could be your parents arguing and looping you into their conflict; your mom criticizing your appearance (or, in her words, “helping you”); or your dad paraphrasing Fox News headlines over breakfast. You…