How can I be sure of having fun on my holiday?

Christmas and New Year is our great festive season and this means holidays. Holidays means time off work and time with the family,

Sounds great for some, and for others it can be a private nightmare.

In all families lurking beneath the surface there is emotional baggage to be dealt with, and there’s nothing like time together to bring issue rushing to the surface.

Being away at work all day can protect you from the demands of constant family life. This can also protect the family from the you that gets pretty grumpy when things don't go your way.

We all have old baggage and all too easily the times arrives when it has to be dealt during holidays. During holidays, it’s the trials and tribulations of regular family life, day-in and day-out, that really puts the pressure on.

And to make matters even more difficult, often the baggage is not even about he actual family you're part of now, but instead they way back to your childhood times when you were living with your family of origin.

It’s just that the family you are living with now has the pleasure or the burden, whatever the case may be, to have you at home and expressing the remnants of your past.

And this can be really serious and tragic stuff, as evidenced by the rise in family violence and suicide during the holiday season, and it's more common than many of us like to think.

It is estimated that only about 25% of families do not have a family argument/conflict on that most joyous of days, Christmas Day.

So does this mean that underneath all of the joy and happiness that there’s something terribly wrong with most families?

Not really!

All families are full of disagreement, conflict and argument. Each member has their different needs and everyone wants their own way all the time. Not everyone can be satisfied all of the time of course.

What distinguishes the well-functioning family from the dysfunctional family is the way arguments, conflicts and disagreements are managed. In well-functioning families this is done so well that, what would have been a major source of disagreement that results in outbreaks of violence in a dysfunctional family, is handled in a friendly and productive family discussion of some sort.

So it's not the absence of potential problems that makes a family functional, but rather their combined ability to make each on of these experiences growthful.