A Christmas visit home can be a complex encounter for all involved. Marie Murray tells us to embrace the complexity
Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before. What if Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store? What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more? - Theodor Seuss Geisel
Looking back, looking forward, remembering the past, considering the future, returning to earlier relationships, negotiating future ways of being, regression, growth, childhood associations, adult assertions, family of origin, family of choice, old family, new family, going home, leaving home.
These are the paradoxes of Christmas.
These psychological polarities encountered in a simple visit home for Christmas are extensive. They are seldom identified, rarely articulated, occasionally confronted and almost always perturbing in a way that is difficult to put words on.
Nonetheless, they form a significant part of what makes Christmas intense for families.
And they are frequently the content of consultations with psychologists after Christmas as adults try to process resentments from the past or new appreciation of how wonderful their parents were when rearing them.
Being in a family means being part of a complex dynamic system of convoluted relationships. A family is not a static thing. It is a system in progress. It is one that has phases, and life-cycle stages through which its members travel together.
Consider the nuclear family: parents, children and the intricacy of the relationships among them. Consider the significance of being the eldest, the youngest, middle child, first son, only daughter or "baby" of the family. What was the relationship between parents when each child was born? What other factors were supporting or stressing parents as a couple then?
How did the children respond to the arrival of new babies? Who was closest to mother, to father, to sibs and which sibs? Was anyone in conflict with one or other parent? Did any family members perceive themselves to be different, isolated, excluded, ignored or conversely favoured, affirmed and privileged?
"Normal" families have unconscious alliances, coalitions, rivalries, dyadic, triadic and dynamic interactions that may shift and change over the years as people alter their understanding of themselves and their relationships with other family members.
Children in families often invite, acquire or have identities foisted upon them: black sheep, golden-haired son, the clever, sensible, responsible, successful, creative, challenging one. They may be the hero, the martyr, the rebel, the compliant and the accommodating child. Children always know who occupies what role at any time.
But when children become adults, leave home, form new alliances and relationships, create their own families and either maintain close contact or reduce contact with their family of origin, new dynamics ensue. What makes Christmas intense for families is that when adult family members converge, old patterns of interaction must be either ignored, renegotiated or be reverted to.
Grown men are amazed at how they may become small boys emotionally when home for Christmas. Some love the regression: mothers plying them with nourishment, petitioning them to eat their sprouts. Some baulk.
Daughters may return to the bliss of being taken care of, ceasing to be mothers and becoming daughters again. Or they may find they are back peeling spuds, angry at the expectation that they resume a former role they have worked hard in the interim to relinquish.
Diverse relationships may disturb parents: unmarried couples, gay child with a partner, re-married, separated, divorced and unmarried children, reconstituted arrangements and the clutter of in-laws and out-laws whom they may love, detest, admire or resent. They may think that they help too little, interfere too much, drink excessively, are killjoys, and either take extreme or inadequate care of their offspring.
Some parents also resent being asked to return to roles they retired from: minders, providers and peacemakers. Or they may revel in reinstatement as the central figures in their adult children's lives. Alternatively, solicitous children may wish to cosset their parents: a situation either invoking gratitude or bringing resentment at being treated as if in dotage.
The complexity of family interconnections is what makes it so difficult to get Christmas right. Kinship links are intense links. Whatever families are, its members are not indifferent to each other.
This is what makes this time of year so powerful. The unspoken infiltrates the festivities. It is the elephant at the Christmas table and the new year party.
The Grinch has it right. Christmas time is about much more than we realise. It is about old patterns and new reactions, original family members and new families, being back home only to leave again, remembering the past while celebrating the new year ahead, watching siblings as adults, oneself grow older and parents advancing in years.
It is coping with psychological polarities, home where one can no longer stay, a child again, yet now an adult, looking back while envisioning the future. It is about life in all its dimensions.
It is about recognising that whatever family we have been part of, good, bad or none, whatever life has brought us, much or little, whatever resources we have or few, whatever relationships, healthy or hurtful; this is a good time to reflect upon the past, reunite with one's earlier self and one's current identity, reconcile with former times or simply embrace future possibilities and have a Happy New Year.
mmurray@irish-times.ie
Marie Murray is director of psychology at St Vincent's Hospital, Fairview.