“Make the world go away and get it off my shoulders.”

 -Eddy Arnold

 Many people want the holiday season to go away.   They think everyone else is having fun and they are not.

 I blame it all on John-Boy Walton.

 On the Walton family Christmas special, The Walton’s got together at a perfect gathering in the splendor of Walton’s mountain.

 It set unrealistic expectations for all viewing families.

 No one got drunk at the Walton family Christmas. There weren’t battles about which divorced parent got which child on which day. All the relatives showed up when they were supposed to. No one fought about which part of which family hosted dinner. No one raced to from city to city to please competing parents, siblings and in-laws.

 John-Boy’s holidays were not like the holiday I knew.

 I went to a childhood Christmas party where a guest hit another with a beer bottle.    I’ll bet John-Boy never got to see that.  

 If you read my recent book, you’ll see my family was high on the non traditional  scale but they tried to make the holidays go well.     Dad was a gambler and mom was a nurse.  It got complicated when both were called to work.

 Nurses are needed on holidays.  Gamblers like to double down their bets around dinner time. 

 Although, I never saw John-Boy’s father write down bets at the dinner table.  I assumed   was normal holiday activity for all families.

 I grew up with a “John-Boy guilt trip.”  I thought my family was the only family who weren’t reenacting the Walton family holiday.

 Then I started talking to others.   My family seemed almost Walton-like compared to other stories I heard.

 There is a silent majority of Americans who don’t fall into the John-Boy category.

 When you consider how many Americans  who are single, divorced, dealing with custody issues,  fighting internal family battles or pleasing competing relatives,  the number that   wind up with a Walton’s holiday  experience is  pretty small.

 The Walton’s were a fictional family on television.  Their holidays weren’t real.   The real John-Boy (Richard Thomas) was twice married and once divorced. 

 I wonder if the real John-Boy and his ex had to work out custody issues like my family did.  

 I know many who hate holidays.  They go out of town, ignore their families and count the minutes for  holidays to end.

 All would do better if they stayed focused on using the time as an opportunity to give back.

 On Christmas, Thanksgiving and Easter my dad would go to the “sleeping room” hotels in downtown Cincinnati and give men bottles of cheap champagne.  I’m not sure that giving booze to alcoholics was a great idea but his heart was in the right place.

  Dad understood that holidays are supposed to be about giving.  Not keeping up with the Walton’s.  

 For the past few years, I have had a recurring dream.

 I want to use Thanksgiving and Christmas as a time to give  pizza to new immigrants.

 The first Thanksgiving was about welcoming pilgrims to a new world.  The first Christmas was about welcoming Jesus, whose family had traveled to Bethlehem.

 Both holidays involved welcoming people to a new land. Offering food is an appropriate way to welcome.

 Although pizza was initially an Italian dish, it has been co-opted by the post war generation and considered uniquely American.  With pizza, you can feed a lot of people for little cost and unsuspecting turkeys don’t have to sacrifice their lives to participate.

 Giving pizza to new Americans seems like an obvious gesture.  Since my dad thought that giving champagne to drunks was an obvious gesture, it comes from a generational history of thinking outside the box.

 I’ve never pulled it off but this could be the year. I don’t know  many immigrants and not sure where I can get  holiday pizza,  but if I can work it out, I will try.  

 It might bring home the point that people from dysfunctional backgrounds can understand the holiday spirit as well as the actors on the Walton’s.

 In fact, we may understand it a little bit better.

 Good night John-Boy. 

 Make sure to put the leftover pizza away.

 Don McNay is the author of Son of a Son of a Gambler.  He is Chairman of the Board for McNay Settlement Group Inc. in Richmond, Ky.  You can write to him at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or read his award winning syndicated column at www.donmcnay.com