Thanksgiving, and really the holiday season at large, has always been a double-edged sword. On one hand, I love the holidays. Christmas in particular. When I was at my absolute most broke, sneaking my own alcohol into bars and selling clothes, records and anything else I could to pay off a bill, I’d still find a way to buy a Christmas tree. Thanksgiving is just pre-Christmas. A practice run for the big show.
This year, the stakes for both the practice and the Big Show are the highest they’ve ever been for me.
That’s because I’m hosting. In my 39 years of life, I’ve never hosted any major holiday, mainly because I have always lived in smaller apartments or on the opposite side of the country. And also because I have never wanted to take on the tidal wave of Type A, super Virgo energy my family brings to every situation.
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I love my family and would take a preferably non-life-threatening bullet for … most of them. And there have been occasions, historically, where that might have been an actual choice I’ve had to consider because of some wild situation created by a member of said family at a baptism, wedding or Peter Piper Pizza.
They are stressful people. Pushy, combative, offensive, impossible to please, loud and mean, but in a clever way so then you’re upset not just because of the horrible thing they said but also because it was delivered with such a sharp wit that you end up laughing at yourself.
Then suddenly you have a nickname that follows you for the next 30 years. Case in point: My full name is Alejandrina. I have severe allergies that require me to carry life-saving medication. I’ve been to the hospital countless times, my face disfigured from swelling, wheezing through tiny pockets of air that manage to sneak past my ballooned breathing passages, staring at death from anaphylactic shock.
Naturally, that garnered me the nickname Alergiandrina.
We always name someone the annual Thanksgiving Ruiner or Christmas Ruiner. More often than not, it’s one of three specific individuals whose identity I will protect but they know who they are, and they’ll likely never read this because they’ve referred to reading as “stupid.”
I love to host, and so does my partner. We love having dinner parties and going all out for birthdays, but the holidays are the big leagues.
Now, we’re choosing masochism. We are welcoming chaos into our home.
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Thankfully, we’re starting off a bit easy. Thanksgiving will be with members of his family, who are all born and bred Midwestern white people.
He once sent me a photo of the food spread at a family event in Nebraska and there were four neon-colored dishes that were each a different type of marshmallow salad. While members of my family will say, “Did you put salt in this? You better not forget ‘cause last time you didn’t put enough and it tasted like s—,” his (from what I understand) may slide the salt closer to you and say, “Oh, here’s this, in case you might need it.” Classic, polite Midwest passive aggression.
I have no idea what else to expect because every family has its own flavor of crazy, its own issues, resentments and trigger points that lead to arguments. I’ve seen my partner frustrated, and the way he can lose his cool when he’s stressed or overwhelmed, and so for weeks we’ve been preparing to eliminate as much stress as possible for both of us.
I’ve spent most of my life doing everything humanly possible to ensure my family’s comfort, happiness and fulfillment. I’ve trained for almost four decades in anticipating their needs and expectations in order to prove to them that I’m a capable person, and in catering to their tests and whims beating the “you don’t have your life together” allegations. Yeah, I have enough guest towels! Oh, do we need an extra potato peeler? I’ve got three!
The likelihood is I’m projecting because I know my life is together and has been for a long time. And I think they know that too. My mom or sister saying, “You should’ve told me, I would’ve brought an extra for us” doesn’t immediately imply disappointment or that they’re looking down on me. But because I’m the baby of my family, a family that, as I’ve mentioned, is not the easiest to navigate, it’s hard not to always feel like that. But the thing is, I love our holidays.
I love us loudly singing Rocio Durcal and Juan Gabriel while eating at the table. I love our dancing, doing shots of tequila, playing raucous games of dice and overall having fun and being silly.
I even like the nicknames based on my debilitating health condition.
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Now, with a new family coming into the life I’m building with my partner, it’s time to decide what our holidays, and in a greater sense our lives together, will look and feel like.
A while back my partner warned me that Thanksgiving might be boring because his family can be more mild. I told him we have to set the tone in our home, and for me, fun is important. Home and the holidays should be loud and silly and joyous, and it’s up to us to make it so. Nobody else. That is something I’ve learned from my family, and I hold it dear to my heart and will protect it.
In trying to build a family of my own, with its own traditions and its own energy, that eliminates as much of the toxic stuff that I grew up with (and he too), I’ve been worried about losing too much of myself, my culture and my family, especially as I welcome new family members who don’t share my cultural background.
It will be a work in progress. It will most likely take many Thanksgivings and Christmases to get it down, and even then there will probably be some issues along the way. But that’s what it takes to build your life how you want it — lots of trial and error, boundary setting, and if a wrestling match breaks out (which has), making sure anything breakable is out of the way.
Alex Zaragoza is a television writer and journalist covering culture and identity. Her work has appeared in Vice, NPR, O Magazine and Rolling Stone. She’s written on the series “Primo” and “Lopez v. Lopez.” She writes weekly for De Los.
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