Spineless Canadians

I need your advice. My parents are bugging me to come home for Thanksgiving. The thing is, as a kid I always hated holidays. No, I loved holidays–what I hated was my parents. Growing up, I was ignored on holidays except when my mom would order me to wait on my brothers and dad. As an adult, it’s no better. My family spends most of the time talking about work, but I’m not allowed to talk about my job because it isn’t a “real job,” since I do low-paying social work. (My dad and brothers work in computers.) Despite my mom being so sentimental about Thanksgiving, she and my dad don’t “do” Christmas because it’s “too much trouble” to buy gifts. And several years ago my mom curtly told me the day before my birthday that we wouldn’t be celebrating my birthday, “since no one will have a good time.”

When I told them a few...