Family is just accident…They don’t mean to get on your nerves. They don’t even mean to be your family, they just are.

That quote, by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Marsha Norman, has been affixed to my fridge for lo these many years, a reminder that we can choose our friends but our family is never ours to pick. Relatives are a crap shoot, an accident of genes, geography and personal histories, much of this decided long before we came into existence. In other words, we can ignore them for 11 months, we can even wax eloquent about how friends are the new family, blah blah blah, but at this time of year, family is family. We’re stuck with them under the mistletoe.

They’re sharing turkey and turrones, a Spanish nougat treat, with us. And they’re bringing their spouses or significant others to our house. Or to our parents’. Or to the annual peace summit sponsored by a mutually acceptable relative who still believes all 74 family members living in the same city should share a Kumbaya moment.

Yes, we are well into the holiday season, a period of good cheer, glad tidings and sudden but intense intimacy. This proximity often results in family squabbles and histrionic blow-ups, or at the very least a vow to never deal with %$&#$@ person again.

Dare I write this?

Heck, why not. Everyone in my family, immediate, extended and otherwise, has managed to insult another family member at least once, and most of the time without even knowing it. I risk little by being plainspoken.

The trials and tribulations of bringing disparate personalities together is the dirty little secret of the season. No family is immune to problems, though I suspect some handle it better than others. But this isn’t about those few. This is about the rest of us.

The families with the Uncle Pepe who drinks too much. With the grandfather who makes off-color jokes at the table. With the children who are destructive hellions. With the sister-in-law who smokes inside the house when she’s asked not to. With the cousin who takes a humongous piece of pumpkin pie, whether or not there’s enough to go around.

And let’s not even mention divorced families and second marriages. That subject is worthy of a column or two, all on its own.

Does any of this sound familiar? It should. Family is the first and best soap opera.

I remember one year in which practically everyone I knew had had at least one family holiday flare up to report. In one house, a needling and obnoxious in-law stormed out when the hostess confronted him for his constantly hurtful statements. In another, a brother — not his wife — was temporarily banished for boorish behavior.

Every family has its unique set of characters, disparate personalities whose quirks may be endearing to some but obnoxious to others. Over time, those traits become more pronounced, more annoying, more insufferable. Yet, the holidays usually make contact unavoidable. Yikes! Then again, as I remind myself every dang year, imagine how boring family gatherings would be without the occasional outburst. I’d have no stories to tell afterward.

It’s scary to admit that one might be related, by blood or marriage, to people you’d rather not know, guests you’d like to uninvite, adults who never fail to amaze and shock. But this is the season of goodwill, and we should all try to get along, even if it’s only for photographs.

That is, after all, why you spike the eggnog.

Follow Ana on Twitter @AnaVeciana.