So well said. Being home for Thanksgiving and Christmas has become a mass cultural fetish stretching back over a century. This would seem completely alien to our ancestors in the 18th and 19th centuries.
If you live in a snow and ice-prone area, there’s no reason the family can’t get together to plan a literal “Christmas in July.” It wouldn’t have the Currier and Ives ambience, of course, but everyone would likely come through uninjured.*
*Offer not valid in case of long-seething family quarrels and/or belligerent brother-in-law.
they did the same on horse back and carriage... id say theyve been doing it since offspring moved out and strated their own elsewhere.
The leftist are working to eliminate those problems. Just as they have done in other traditions.