Most wonderful time of year, my foot—keep the change you filthy animal!
As a therapist, I have a front-row seat to the pitfalls and perils of the holiday season. A candy cane of toxic positivity up the nose, it drones on: Be cheerful, be happy, be bright, no matter the challenges of living in a world south of the North Pole.
And while we’re up there, don’t tell Santa I stole this line from a movie: Family is complicated. They tear your heart apart when you most need them and leave you home alone to figure it all out.
It’s why each year, I recommend a revisit to the Christmas classic of an 8-year-old boy left to fend for himself and become the unlikely hero of a story gone wrong.
You’d think like a good psychologist, I would focus on the resourcefulness and pluck of Kevin McCallister. Nah, let’s be bad. Most of what’s truly magical about Home Alone happens within the first 10 minutes.
Misunderstood, passed over, mocked, and belittled, Kevin is viewed as a nuisance for expressing his feelings. Even while trying to navigate the confusion of not being allowed to watch a movie or how to find his power opposite his bullying brother Buzz, Kevin is just trying to make sense of all he notices.
Why are people so busy on their phones? Why are they so quick to judge? Why don’t they care to uncover the full story? And most of all, why are they so shocked when you ruin Christmas with a blowup because nobody has been listening?
That’s what lands Kevin in the attic. Hoping he can finally get what he needs, represented by the plain pizza he specifically requested, Kevin loses it when Buzz not only eats the last slice but mockingly barfs it up.
When Kevin stands up for himself and speaks truth to power to a distracted and disinterested community—sound familiar nearly 35 years later?—he is told that he’s the only one in the house of 15 who “has to make trouble.”
So many of my clients, and all of us really, have to make trouble. And the holidays are no different.
The psyche—remember, that’s Greek for “soul”—only comes out to play when you get down on the level of the child. Or, if you’re a divine child, it happens in a smelly and humble manger. This is far away from the shiny happy packaged Christmas you’d expect.
It’s the perfect trip to Paris spoiled when Kevin’s mother finally remembers her own heart. It’s when Kevin, the problem child, tenderly hangs stockings for those who brand him helpless, incompetent, a little jerk worth feeding to a tarantula. It’s when the entire McCallister family realizes the people who drive you the most mad are the ones you miss most.
Even if we’re in a room filled with people, we’re all home alone on Christmas. We’re all reliving the ways we’ve been ignored, minimized, and disappointed by the people we most hope will truly see us. Or at least save us a slice!
Kevin frees us to be a little bad to get to what’s most true. We root for him because we are rooting, once and for all, for ourselves. A child who, once upon a time, just wanted to be heard. A fragile creature who wanted to feel empowered.
That still small voice is found in the places we least expect. Kevin finds it sitting in a pew next to the South Bend Shovel Slayer. From the way he tells Kevin about the complications of family, you’d think Old Man Marley was the proverbial Wise Old Man. But just a beat later, Kevin is schooling him on how to face his fears and pluck up the courage to call his estranged son.
Marley is transformed, becoming one of the three wise men visiting the mischievous Christ figure of Kevin McCallister himself. Who knew the devil of our film would become our newest angel?
And so it is with so many of us. We greet the holidays hoping and wishing that everything will be just right, when it turns out, we’re all meant to get it completely wrong.
Toxic Positivity Essential Reads
We’re all that child left home alone, and we all forget that child too.
This holiday, let’s give that child grace, no matter if they’ve been naughty or nice. They deserve to feel at home together again, this time of year, more than ever.
