Hosting Holidays: A Thankless Task

By Jeannine Cintron

I’ll have Christmas at my house. You can do Thanksgiving.

But I did Thanksgiving last year and I undercooked the turkey and almost got everyone sick! Why can’t our cousins ever host? They always come here with one cheap little bottle of wine, stuff their faces, and then have the nerve to ask for leftovers!

This is the exact conversation I have with my family every year when the holidays approach. Somehow what was once a treasured time to celebrate special days with loved ones has morphed into a violent game of hostess dodgeball, where we all desperately attempt to avoid being pelted by the dreaded holiday hosting obligations.

If my grandmother were still alive, I wonder if she’d be the type who would happily host every occasion from A to Z, force-feeding us endless mozzarella-covered entrées and homemade Italian pastries. I bet she would have been that grandma, no questions asked. In fact, she would be downright insulted by the mere suggestion of someone else hosting. Unfortunately, my sweet grandmother passed away in 1987, and thus the hosting wars began.

As a kid, we mostly ping-ponged between my mother’s house and my aunt’s. We have a small family, so the options were always limited. Now that I’m an adult and can cook a turkey all by myself (well, sort of...), I’ve been added to the short list of hosts. I have to say, it’s been a cranberry sauce-and-gravy-soaked nightmare.

It’s not that I don’t love seeing my family. We’re spread across Staten Island, Brooklyn, and New Jersey, so it’s always a pleasure to get together and make up for lost time. But it’s never a picnic for the flustered hostess du jour. While everyone else is catching up, sipping wine, and nibbling appetizers, the hostess is chained to a hot stove. Sweat covers her brow and oven mitts fly off her busy hands as she simultaneously chops, preps, fries, roasts, sautés, braises, and mashes—all while quietly praying the food won’t be cold and tasteless by the time it gets to the table.

Even if dinner is perfectly warm and delicious, there will always be a few unhappy campers. It’s impossible to please everybody. In my family, some people don’t eat meat, some people seem to only eat meat, and some are on a never-ending low-fat, low-carb, low-calorie, low-taste diet. One relative refuses to eat anything with garlic or onions (don’t ask me why he married into an Italian family), another can’t eat anything chewy, and at least two people are lactose intolerant. That’s not even counting all of the picky kids!

Hosting is a costly endeavor as well. Even if you’re fortunate to have family members who contribute, pot-luck style, bringing home-cooked dishes of their own creation instead of cheap wine (I’m looking at you, cousin Jen!), you’ll still be stuck with a hefty grocery tab. Even when you try to keep it simple, it always adds up.

Then, after all the shopping and pre-cooking is complete, you’ve got to whip the house into shape. There’s always that one painfully rude relative who never fails to point out the dust on the fan blades or the loose Cheerios under the kitchen table. Who needs that? So after the turkey goes in, the mop and broom come out. I clean before the sun comes up whenever I’m hosting because anyone with kids knows how easy it is to wash floors with kids running around. Sure, it’ll probably be a mess again by dinnertime, but at least I tried. And if Rude Relative points out the rogue potato peel on the floor by the garbage, I’m hiding it in her food.

Your own family doesn’t help the situation at all. The kids’ instructions are simple: get dressed, stay clean, and stay out of the way. You enlist your husband’s help with the seemingly simple task of keeping them occupied all day. And maybe he does—until football starts, of course (I mean, at least set the table first, hun!). After a while, the kids are chasing each other around the kitchen, sticking their fingers in the food, messing up their holiday outfits, and whining because Daddy shut off their cartoons to watch sports. You’re 10 seconds from losing your mind and no one seems to care.

If you’re anything like me, you’re already burnt out long before the guests arrive. You’ve been scrubbing since dawn, cooking since Tuesday, and dreading it all since the day you agreed to host. But, like the perfect hostess you are, you grab an apron, dole out some welcome hugs, and power through the exhaustion. And you (somehow) do it all with a smile because you’re a total rock star.

They say there’s no place like home for the holidays. But I respectfully disagree.