What's good about the holidays? How can a scrooge become more excited about them?

There is a certain someone in my family, we won’t say who, who finds the holidays to be a miserable time. It’s an awful lot of work. His wife gets seriously depressed and feels like she can’t do anything. He can only get along pretending that it isn’t happening, but the children are playing the Christmas tune radio station and it isn’t even Thanksgiving yet!!! It’s hard to be in denial in such an environment.

He doesn’t want to spoil things for the kids, but, wow, the travelling, spending ten hours on a trip that should take five hours, dealing with parents that don’t know how to be good grandparents, and on and on. He just wants to crawl in a hole and pull the door closed and not come out until March.

Anyway, can you explain what is good about the holidays? Is there anything he can do to change his attitude about these things?