I write this from a hotel room near my home town. We had to escape. Two weeks with both sides of our family has sent us into hiding, and I will not disclose our location. The holiday traditions that sounded so lovely and warm in November are long gone now. A Snow Cat rolled over them somewhere between the eggnog and the yule log. As we packed the car, we vowed that next year we will take this delicious expanse of two weeks with our children and do something extraordinary _ a getaway with just the two kids, when we can be our little family without the pressures of dueling traditions. We agreed on our New Year's resolution. In the rearview mirror, we saw the detritus of my traditional Christmas dinner, killed by the in-laws' preference for a restaurant. The leisurely brunch we wanted to have on New Year's Day at a restaurant was quashed by my parents' second round of sledding and heart-healthy oatmeal. His family drives three blocks to dinner; mine cross-country skis there. In the kitchens, we skirmished over dishwasher-loading techniques, knife sharpening, coffee grinding, the best way to put sweetener in coffee, how long to cook a steak and the stacking of Tupperware. On Christmas, I declared my savior to be the merry margarita, and plenty of Facebook friends agreed. They were exasperated by their families, too. There was the heated argument over health-care reform, the remote-control tug of war between Fox News and CNN, the epic argument over when to use the four-wheel drive and, of course, a debate about whether vampires are cooler than werewolves. When my husband's family planned its annual dive into the frightening waters of the shopping mall in December, I shuddered in fear and went to work instead. When my family clicked into our skis for a nighttime schuss at 8,200 feet on New Year's Eve, my husband declared us all insane and retreated to the ski lodge. And to think that I always wondered why anyone would want to vacation away from extended family over the winter break. Mai tais instead of mulled wine? Grand Bahama instead of grandma? But a recent Travelocity poll found that 58 percent of people polled said they would rather go on a real vacation than an obliged, out-of-town visit to family. That kind of getaway is known as an oblication, which is barely one step above a staycation. Or maybe I mean one step down. The past two weeks involved two cross-country flights, 379 timeouts, three crying jags and several declarations of divorce (by several women). I began to think that 58 percent of people in the Travelocity survey are very, very smart. We left my family a day early (before my father discovered we had broken the shower head in his bathroom), found a hotel near the airport and exhaled. I immediately went online to start looking for next year's destination. Later, we had dinner with an old friend of ours, a single mom of a 3-year-old who has lost both of her parents. She joined us for Christmas a couple of years ago, and we still worry that she was overwhelmed by the chaos of it all. 'You know, I was just so lonely this year. I was kind of waiting for an invitation all week,' she told us. 'I just don't have that pull to go anywhere, and sometimes I wish for that.' Last year, my husband and I resolved to spend the holidays away from the family. Of course, we forgot about that pact once autumn came, and we felt that pull. It's probably what will happen again. I think that for December 2010, we'll do one thing differently: extend that invitation to our friend and allow the electricity that three children can generate to light up the holiday. Christmas and chaos, one and the same. E-mail me with your post-holiday woes at dvorakp@washpost.com. 