This week is “Holiday Survival Week” on the USM Portland Campus. The Healthy USM Portland Wellness Committee has put together a schedule of activities that offer participants a less stressful and more satisfying holiday season at a lower cost to body, soul and bank account. The activities are designed to address four great fictions of our holiday expectations: Finances – We can charge stuff we can’t afford and expect no financial difficulties later. Food – It’s a special occasion and we can eat whatever will fit. Family – Old anxieties will be forgotten, or forgiven. Fantasies – Everybody must be happy, of course, it’s a holiday!
Have holidays become some kind of physiological, psychological, and fiscal trials to be survived? We hope this is not the case and that you still think of a good holiday as something to be enjoyed: friends, fun and feast! But good holidays do take planning and preparation. In full support of more enjoyable holidays, FootPrint offers its view of the four F’s:
Finance-
Apparently too many of us carry holiday credit card debt about six months or more. All that carrying costs a bundle and we’re not just speaking cash. Financial pressures can make the stress of final exams look tame. Homes are lost and marriages fail. In the last FootPrint column, “The Good Present,” Sarah Wolpow presented three vignettes in an exploration of what makes a present “good.” High cost was not a determining factor.
A present that poses the possibility of significant financial strain into the middle of the following year probably shouldn’t make the cut. Would you rather have debt-stressed friends or hang with folks that manage better the money they have? Good friends, like good presents, don’t drive people into debt.
Food-
Holidays are difficult times to attempt to adopt healthier eating habits. The Spirit Lounge, an upscale eatery in Montreal, charges a two dollar fee to customers that don’t eat what they’ve ordered and donates the money to a charity that combats hunger. If you order a dessert and don’t finish their delicious, after-dinner indulgence, you are “banned from the lounge,” apparently for life. Before you order, the policy is clearly explained, including the option of ordering one of three portion sizes. The restaurant owner believes it is a crime against humanity’s hungry millions to order more than you plan to eat. The menu items are described in precise detail and customers are encouraged to request customized orders to avoid allergies or other difficulties. If the spirit of the Spirit Lounge was with us more of the year, we could probably eat pretty much anything we wanted over the holidays. And maybe more of us would get enough to eat as well.
Family-
It can be tricky to just manage the heightened expectations we have for ourselves during the holidays. Final exams, papers, jobs and travel, all present increased demands but we find, not surprisingly, that friends and family members also want an increased share of our life. Sharing can take many forms, some of which are symbiotic and strengthening. These special relationships are the ones we can rely on to help us meet the demands of the season. For those other, sometimes rewarding but more difficult and “required” relationships, we must rely on our understanding of our own limits to help us through the holiday maze of family idiosyncrasies. Just as there are financial limits and limits to what we can eat, we each have a limited amount of physical and psychological “energy” and all of us benefit when we aren’t running on empty.
Fantasy-
The myths we hold, our fantasized visions of what holidays are “supposed” to be, take many forms. If there is a common element, it is that our fantasies are universally unrealistic. We find that we have once again set the bar too high and are disappointed. In centuries past, our fantasies were churned to a relative frenzy by our incredible imaginations and by village story tellers. Today, the concerted effort of hundreds of billions of marketing dollars and the best efforts of our film industry have probably moved our fantasies beyond the edge of control.
I am happily working to take back control and plan to attend at least one of the helpful “how-to” events of Healthy USM’s Holiday Survival Week. Please join me this week in the Campus Center.
Dudley Greeley ca n be contacted at [email protected]