Holidays Gone Awry? Here Are 3 Big Picture Assists to Get You Back on Track

Counting our blessings helps us deal with difficult situations. Andrei Porzhezhinskii/Shutterstock

There are plenty of random vexations that increase our stress and can sour the holiday mood, ranging from the cat leaping into the Christmas tree to a New Year’s Eve power failure.

Approximately 117 million Americans will crowd the nation’s roadways and airports during the holidays this December. For some, congestion and delays will upend their travel plans.

Meanwhile, flu season is now in full swing. Throw in the common cold, strep, and pneumonia, and up go the odds that you or a family member will be feeling woozy and exhausted come late December.

When it comes to handling the ordinary challenges of the season—the frenetic pace, the overblown expectations, difficult relatives, and more—here are three broad bits of wisdom that can help us navigate setbacks and enjoy the runup to 2025.

Choose Your Attitude

In “Man’s Search for Meaning,” Holocaust survivor and psychologist Viktor Frankl wrote, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

Frankl’s assertion may seem heavy-handed as a device for taking pleasure in the holidays when your plans are interrupted, but notice that the author writes “in any given set of circumstances.” A delayed flight home for Christmas or a child sick with the flu on New Year’s Eve interrupts your plans, leaving you disappointed and perhaps angry, but how you handle these minor catastrophes—and they are minor—can make or break your holiday spirit and the spirits of those around you.

Put KAGA—Keep a Good Attitude—at the top of your holiday to-do list.

Try This Path

Whenever I think of G.K. Chesterton, my first reaction is a smile, and the word that comes to mind is rollicking. Known as “the Prince of Paradox” for his use of that device in his writing, he was exuberant both on the page and in real life.

In one essay, “On Running After One’s Hat”—that title alone gives us a sense of the man—Chesterton throws out a bit of wisdom that can carry us through all sorts of mishaps and minor misfortunes: “An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.”

Frankl reminds us we have the freedom to choose our attitude; Chesterton directs us to a choice. Adventure will liven up, or at least make more bearable, almost any inconvenience we encounter. If you’re hosting a Christmas Day get-together with extended family and the electricity suddenly flickers off, leaving the roast half-cooked in the oven, you must choose between adventure and inconvenience. The latter choice may find you cursing the power company and sinking into despondency, infecting the others with your mood. Adventure means breaking out some candles, rooting through the pantry and refrigerator, concocting a meal of peanut butter sandwiches, carrot sticks, and some leftover stocking candies for dessert, and belting out “Auld Lang Syne” at midnight, roast or no roast.

Stop and Count Your Blessings

In the film version of “The Sound of Music,” the von Trapp children come to Maria’s room when they are frightened by a storm. She soon begins singing “My Favorite Things.” Here is a stanza from that popular song to keep handy when trouble comes knocking:

When the dog bites When the bee stings When I’m feeling sad I simply remember my favorite things And then I don’t feel so bad

Implicit in this remedy for sadness is a medicine that cures many ills: gratitude. When complications or disappointments shoot holes in our holiday expectations, help arrives when we count our blessings rather than our misfortunes. Recently, I spoke with a North Carolina friend who had lost everything she owned to Hurricane Helene—her car was totaled, and her condo was flooded with seven feet of water. Devastated at first, by the time we spoke, she told me she was just grateful to be alive and in the arms of her children and grandchildren. The flooding and destruction were beyond her control, but she’d made the conscious decision to focus on what was most important in her life.

We can do the same when we encounter far more trivial holiday stumbling blocks. By taking charge of our attitude, coloring it up with a sense of adventure, and recollecting the meaning of the holiday season and the bright spots in our lives, we can deal with those irritating obstacles that interrupt our plans.

As the song goes, ’Tis the season to be jolly. Keeping the big picture in mind will help to make it so.