Welcome Brookester. I also have a "reunion" every year and it is still a bad time for me. I think that only time and love can ease the pain in the end... it won't happen over night as you well know, but I really think you need to find some or other kind of distraction during December, something that you enjoy so that you don't only have negative connotations to that time. It is very hard at first to be proactive in your own recovery, but sometime you're gonna have to make that choice. Do you have some friends that you can spend the holiday with instead?