Plans are nothing. Planning is everything. Dwight Eisenhower said that in a moment of Zen. It must have been Christmastime.

To me, Christmas is a well-meant time of good cheer, the re-mentioning of sisterhood and brotherhood and the hope for peace on what’s left of the earth. It’s also indisputably the commercialized holiday surrounding the 25th of December. As the actual birthday of Jesus, it may be a little off. But an older holiday, the pagan ritual of Saturnalia, was celebrated at the end of the calendar year in Rome, so for the sake of convenience, it became Christmas time. That’s what I was told. That’s the way I grew up — and I’m Jewish.

But that didn’t stop my family from celebrating Christmas. During my childhood, I helped decorate a tree in our living room and then lit the menorah candles in our dining room. My parents, young adults of the Depression, were not going to deny their only child any chance to experience good cheer, no matter how it was dispensed.

Even though there was a nod to the holy holiday of Hanukkah as it fluctuated through each December, my parents assimilated into the real holiday spirit and bought into Christmas. It was an annual adventure to find the right tree that could be hauled up two flights of stairs and installed in the apartment corner with the nearest electrical outlet. They made all sorts of plans and looked forward to them — plans for gift-shopping, for gift-swapping, for Christmas dinner at some swanky hotel where dining rooms were open 365 days a year. For my parents, planning was everything.

Then I married into the Lyons family where plans go to die. To be precise, in this family, planning is akin to cleaning a fresh fish — somebody has to do it but why should it be me? My wife, Paula, has eight siblings, which means the game of passing the buck can go on for quite some time. Since they all made it into adulthood without ever experiencing starvation, the tacit understanding is why stick your neck out and make a reservation. Things will work out even if no one takes charge. Sounds to me like the definition of an unstable democracy. But to them, it’s become a family style. They like to refer to their inaction as “spontaneity.” They somehow miss the point that a decision does get made, even if it means everyone for himself or herself. What’s a family for if you can’t go off in nine different directions?

For many years of our marriage, Paula and I engaged in forced planning. We would host a Christmas day dinner for everyone who wanted one. Then afterwards, all the missing family members would join us in exchanging gifts and wolfing down desserts. One-stop shopping for what usually turned out to be a 12-hour food-athon with three-dozen characters of all ages.

Then six years ago, Paula and I committed a criminal act. As other family members put it, we “sold the Christmas house.” Compounding the felony, we then moved to the Vineyard. The bereft Lyons family was left to plan Christmas without the manger, so to speak. Plan? Did someone say “plan”? Well, first Paula’s sister Patty came to the rescue and set up the holiday dinner at her house, but it came with a proviso. The dessert portion of the fun would have to take place elsewhere. Paula’s brother Richard came to that rescue. Soon, the new tradition was dinner here and desserts there. Everyone brought a dessert and/or libation.

This concept has now broken down to everybody scrambles to eat dinner with someone somewhere, but then we all convene at Richard’s for the big dessert blow-out, which can go on for six hours.

This dessert confab has turned into a harmless quibble at the O.K. Corral where stories as old as the hula hoop get spun around again and where a passing comment may open a political wound. This happens late in the game, so this is mainly the talk of alcohol or sugar consumption or sleep deprivation. Some of this is the penalty of an endurance test where non-stop standing resembles training to be buried in a Tokyo cemetery – i.e. vertically. And, of course, all is forgotten or forgiven on December 26.

This year’s plan? After many phone calls and emails (one of them should have been to a travel agent), I became haunted by Luis Bunuel’s film, “Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie,” in which 12 people suffer in a surreal nightmare of foiled attempts to dine together. As of this writing, there will be only five of us for dinner in a Boston restaurant. Make that lunch. The sweet end of the Christmas meal has been moved up to 5:30 p.m. because we’re getting older and a little more reasonable about when to call it a night. Other family members will be nibbling while concocting all sorts of desserts and figuring out who gets to use which oven first. It’s called planning.

Arnie Reisman and his wife, Paula Lyons, regularly appear on the weekly NPR comedy quiz show, Says You! He also writes for the Huffington Post.