Not ‘The Waltons’: The Ugly Realities of Holiday Togetherness : Christmas: There is another tradition, far less discussed. It’s the season’s ugly underbelly, the flip side of ‘Joy to the World.’

Take a spin down Main Street, past the 12-foot-tall fir at City Hall, the perennial plasterboard Santa perched over the mall, the whole holiday scene, as predictable as Uncle Sidney’s whiskey-laced eggnog.

It is Tradition according to the Book of Hallmark. From all corners of the nation, relatives return to hearth and home. Gather the family and deck the halls. Here we come a-wassailing!.

But there is another tradition, one far less discussed, one on which few like to dwell. It’s the season’s ugly underbelly, the flip side of “Joy to the World,” the story behind Bing Crosby’s old TV specials.

Amid all the Yuletide hype and expectations, otherwise temperate adults who deal quite nicely with each other the rest of the year often find themselves testy, intolerant, emotionally raw.

“I have this friend, and every year we pack up our cars, give each other a hug goodby and say, ‘This year is going to be different,’ ” said Barbara Otto, 25, of Cleveland. “But each year, it’s the same. I come back feeling I need a vacation because my dad told me I was fat or something.”

This is not how things go on Walton’s Mountain. Mary Ellen would never observe how Ma has been cranky ever since menopause set in. Erin would never come home an unwed mother. John Boy would never floor Pa by announcing that he’d dropped out of college to pursue a career in heavy metal rock. Grandpa would never show up with his own fifth of Scotch.

On television the dinner table is full of closeness and warmth. No cook slaving at the stove, no dieter dejectedly declining dessert. No voice-over explaining that dad just lost his job or that Aunt Martha was recently widowed.

No one is “dysfunctional” or “in denial.” No one is leaning across the marshmallow-yam casserole to confide tearfully: “You know, I’ve got a wounded child within. . . . “

On television, in a Hallmark card, around one of Martha Stewart’s air-brushed dinner tables, the outbursts and bloopers are edited out. It’s easy to forget that real life is sloppy and imperfect and, sometimes, painful.

“We as a society want so badly to believe the images we see on TV that it’s hard to admit you dread going home,” Otto said. “It sounds almost un-American to hate Christmas.”

We spend billions of dollars each year equipping ourselves with holiday gifts and trappings. We travel thousands of miles, brave department store crowds and bury family hatchets in the name of seasonal cheer.

“At holidays, perfection becomes paramount. It’s part of wanting to be loved and nurtured. It’s almost primal,” said Jo Robinson, co-author of “Unplug the Christmas Machine.”

“Christmas is like a big stage,” she said, “and we expect everyone to play their roles perfectly.”

Such high expectations! So much invested in making sure that everything is just right! This time, we tell ourselves, it will be all glad tidings.

“Until one gesture brings back a whole flood of memories,” Robinson said from Portland, Ore. “Your sister refuses to pass the mashed potatoes and your entire childhood flashes before you.”

For Frank Buffone, 33, a schoolteacher in New York, it begins before he reaches the guest room of his parents’ Florida home.

“The very minute I get there, I get the tour of the refrigerator,” he said. “That means Mom goes through everything she’s bought just for me and expects me to eat--the things I used to love when I was 15 years old.”

Buffone doesn’t particularly care for licorice anymore, but even as he thinks, “I’ve long outgrown that,” adolescent pangs are prompted by what his sister does or doesn’t do, by what his dad says or doesn’t say.

“You go home with all these expectations,” Buffone said. “That’s what gets you home again and again, the idea that Dad will be wearing a Santa Claus hat and Mom will be wearing pearls, that it will be relaxed and everyone will sit around the fireplace and chat.”

Today, however, the family that comes together at Christmastime far more often than not falls outside what used to be the traditional norm. On any suburban block you’re apt to find divorce or remarriage, stepchildren or only children, gay parents or a couple who are childless by choice.

“Yeah. It’s pretty hard to find the perfect picture, but it’s harder to talk about not having it,” said David Sawle, publisher of Lifestyle magazine in Oakland, Calif. “It’s uncomfortable, and sometimes sad.”

Growing up in Wisconsin in the 1950s, Sawle saw his life stretching ahead in a predictable formula. By now, he figured, he would be a grandfather welcoming home his adoring children. Instead, he is a divorced father.

“The month of December is emotionally loaded,” he said.

“In many ways, Christmas is a time of grieving,” said Nancy Warren, director of the family transition program at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. “There’s often the wish that some imaginary family--the family we never had--will be there.”

Many young adults are delaying marriage and family, which means that aging parents often must continue playing ringmaster for children they assumed by now would be stuffing stockings for children of their own.

That is how Evelyn Moriels got caught up in this year’s Dickensian mess.

Part matriarch and part elf, Moriels prides herself on making a nice holiday for her single daughter and three young grandchildren. But this year she is unemployed. She was laid off from her job inspecting glassware at a factory in Waco, Tex., without warning just a few weeks ago.

“Stress isn’t the word for it,” Moriels said. “It’s just depressing if I dwell on it. Christmas has always meant laughter, gifts, big dinners--the whole nine yards--but this year will be different. There’s sure to be disappointment.”

Heightened sensitivities often mix badly with the alcohol, gluttony, travel, expense and general seasonal stress. Tempers flare and old grudges resurface. Siblings revisit rivalry; parents reprise old roles.

Like an ugly flashback, family members are drawn back into roles they thought were long ago safely left behind.

LaMarriol Smith, 27, is the good child, the dutiful daughter who finished college and got a steady job in public relations. Her brother’s has been a somewhat bumpier route through unemployment and temporary addresses.

“We keep it civilized,” Smith said, “but I’m sure my brother feels like there’s pressure or that we’re sizing up his progress. A lot of people unintentionally compare him to me, and he probably despises it.”

It’s easy to slip into familiar patterns and unnecessary rigidity.

“You fall right back into your roles,” said Susan Ginsberg, who directs the work and family programs at Bank Street College in New York. “My girls are in their 30s, and I hear myself saying, ‘It’s cold out so you better put on a sweater.’ There’s a lot of that, and people get very irritated.”

It’s been called the “nuclear reactor,” a temperamental mix of long-simmering grudges and sentimentalized memories.

“There tends to be an outpouring of emotion. It may feel like your chance to unload, the big moment to speak up,” said Fretta Reitzes of the youth and family program at the 92nd Street Y in New York.

But think twice.

“There’s no point in going home with a laundry list of the last 20 years of your life and then having it out with Mom while stuffing the turkey,” Reitzes said. “It just adds to the tumult and confusion.”

Holidays are not the ideal moment to intervene with an alcoholic cousin or to accuse Dad of being emotionally distant. Don’t bring up your younger sister’s flirtations or question Mom’s decision to bottle feed.

Such discussions are better held in quieter moments, experts say. Instead, look for calming influences, simple rituals to replace overblown traditions that have a tendency to backfire.

Do as Joyce Rosenbusch, a laid-back Texan who long ago abandoned any notion of going doily to doily with Martha Stewart. There’s no great hoo-ha, no elaborate gifts. Just a gastronomically incorrect meal of turkey, ham, sausage balls, and coconut and chocolate pie slathered with Cool Whip.

“We’re poor people--nothing fancy,” said Rosenbusch, whose three children and five grandchildren gather at the family’s farmhouse. “We just lay out a nice tablecloth, sit down and enjoy one another. No one expects anything more.”

Good night, John Boy!