`Holiday Syndrome’ Not Only Affects Wives
By Kim Rahn
Staff Reporter
With the five-day Lunar New Year holiday coming up, how many days can you take a ``real rest,'' having a full day for your own, without worries or stress from the family gathering?
Park Jung-soo, 36, feels stressed whenever thinking of the upcoming holiday. His hometown is Gwangju, and his siblings gather at their parents' house there on Chuseok and Lunar New Year, Korea's two biggest holidays.
On every such occasion, it is his wife who has to make the food and prepare for the ancestor-memorial services together with his mother and sisters-in-law. At first glance, his wife seems to do all the work while Park seems just to chat with his parents and siblings.
``The moment when the family gathering ends and we come back to Seoul, my stress begins ― I have to pat my wife on the back for her efforts and comfort her after her feelings of awkwardness with her in-laws' family. I know the whole holiday thing is a stress for her, but comforting her is also stress for me, and with both of us under stress, we often quarrel during the holidays,'' Park said.
Like Park, many males these days get stressed on holidays. The so-called ``holiday syndrome,'' symptoms ranging from irritation to melancholy, which females usually have to endure due to extra holiday cooking and other chores, is apparently no longer restricted to women.
Looking into the sources of ``holiday stress,'' Lotte Mart did a survey on 3,500 people. Among men most said that it was the traffic jams that irritated them the most.
Husbands are the ones most likely to take the wheel. ``Last Chuseok, it took almost 10 hours from Gwangju back to Seoul. I was so exhausted,'' Park said.
The second biggest stress source was financial burden, with many surveyed males complaining of having to prepare presents for parents and handsets for their nephews and nieces. Others found it stressful to have to visit or meet relatives they seldom see.
Female respondents, on the other hand, found cooking and preparing the memorial services most stressful.
Experts say every member of the family needs to make efforts to minimize holiday stress. Husbands are recommended to actively help wives with cooking, cleaning and washing dishes, while both husbands and wives are advised to remain civil with each other even though they had an unpleasant time with their respective in-laws.