Wednesday December 13. Time to finalize your plans. Aim to hit all the bases – parents, step-parents, in-laws, weird Uncle Harold – all on the one big day. Two breakfasts, three identical dinners, and at least two hours in the car. You’ll be fine when the day comes. It’s the spirit of Christmas!

Psychology Today:

Twas the month before Christmas,
and from Heaven to Hell,
Psychologists quivered
In fear of their cell.

And why? Because every time it rings it’s from the junior peon of a local media outlet who has been assigned the annual dreaded “Managing Holiday Stress” item. This obligatory and invariably dull piece demands input from an expert willing to hold forth on the hoary topic. And what is there to say, really? Especially if you hope to say something that hasn’t been repeated a thousand times before.

Furthermore, it’s all irrelevant. Psychologists blather on, and people continue to have miserable holidays. Perhaps we need to declare defeat, embrace the directional flow, and issue guidance on how to make the holidays even less enjoyable. Who, after all, is a better expert on the means of making life miserable than a therapist?

To this end, and in commemoration of the publication of How to be Miserable: 40 Strategies You Already Use, I offer the 2017 Unpleasant Advent Calendar, already in progress. Forgive the Christmas-centric focus; it is the favorite of all holidays to complain about – and the main one that people bring up in therapy...