How I am Able to Spend the Holidays Alone, and Why it Doesn’t Bother Me
It’s 11:30, Thanksgiving Eve. Christmas music has already been playing for most of the day. The turkey is in the oven for the first half of its roasting time. Bradley is curled up on his favorite chair, snoozing and content. Baby Duncan is wandering around the room, always curious, as most toddlers are, his little nails clicking on the floor beneath him. He pauses to sniff and inspect the tree, which is all new to him. Finally, he stretches out on the carpet next to the tree. He may be another “tree sleeper” dog. All my babies have been, except Bradley, who has always preferred a chair or the sofa. But it seems as if Duncan has taken to the tree. The house is warm and cozy and quiet, and the only lights on in the room are the undecorated tree and a lamp on my desk. And it’s peaceful. I have no holiday plans, no day of driving around in the cold visiting a dozen relatives, no schedules for meals to keep, no dreaded anticipation of familial conflicts or spats at the dinner table, no feelings of, “God, is it polite for me to make my exit yet?”…granted, I also do not have the feelings of camaraderie you feel when gathered around close family or friends, the feelings of inclusion, of being part of something else, and of not feeling lonely. But I still wouldn’t change how I spend my holidays. At least not right now. A relationship in the future could, and probably would change it some, but well, I’m too set in my own ways, especially when it comes to holiday traditions to be willing to change them too much. Over the years, as I have been on my own, I have adapted to that lifestyle, and instead of being depressed over it, I chose instead to embrace things and celebrate the holiday season, my favorite time of the year, to the fullest, in my own way, with no stress, expectations, or hectic schedules and obligations, unless I want to have some of them. It’s an amazingly liberating feeling, to be able to be in complete control of how you celebrate your holiday, without having to give a damn about pleasing anyone but yourself. And it’s really not too much different from how I grew up, so perhaps that is why it seems totally normal to me…because so far as my life is concerned, it IS normal.
I never had much in the way of family…nothing at all like most people had when they were younger. For most of my childhood, and especially at holidays, and for the Christmas season in particular, it was just my parents and younger sister, and of course, the family dogs, which were very much part of the family, too. I never knew my mother’s side of our family. A falling out between my mother and her brother immediately after my grandmother passed away forever shut the door on her side of the family. They had been around before that, but I was too young to remember their presence. I know of them only from photographs, in which my sister and I were still very young children. My father’s side of the family was more present, but they lived farther away and subscribed to different religious beliefs than my parents did, and these differences made spending a lot of time with them during holidays difficult, confusing, and awkward from the perspective of a child. Not wanting to intensify the confusion, my parents kept our exposure limited; it was not at all from a lack of liking them, but rather as a way of shielding my sister and me from the awkwardness. They were being protective parents. They made up for the lack of family by showering us with attention and gifts during the holiday season themselves; Christmas was like having the entire Sears catalog delivered under our tree. Remember how excited we got as kids when that Sears toy catalog arrived in the mail? The “Wish Book” they called it. That was years before the internet. My, how things have changed!
Because it was just our nuclear family celebrating the holidays, they very much became a home-centered time of year. We were rarely bundled up and shuffled around visiting, and in fact, one thing my mother insisted on, and looking back I completely agree with her, was that once my sister and I were born, family came to us, at least when we were very little. My mother didn’t believe in packing up tiny children and subjecting them to an upheaval in daily meal and nap schedules just to go visiting family who could just as easily come see us, and with much less trouble. Decorating the house for Christmas was a big deal in my family, and we all partook in this ritual. My father, while he enjoyed football, was not an avid viewer of games, unless the one or two teams he liked happened to be playing. He could easily pass by a game to spend time with the family instead. I always respected Dad for that. As a child, Thanksgiving weekend was spent almost exactly the same way I spend it now…decorating the house for Christmas, passing through the Kitchen every few minutes to check the oven or stir something cooking on the stove. Mom would pull out her vinyl Christmas albums and the music would play. I painstakingly hunted every one of them down on Ebay years ago and have my own collection of the very same albums, except I found all of them still sealed in plastic so they play without the scratches and pops the childhood albums accumulated over the years. I remember the year my sister and I begged Mom and Dad for a tree for our Playroom; they got us the most wonderful little tree. It was just our height, round and fat and full, and we could decorate it ourselves. Somewhere in my mother’s photo albums are a few pictures of the tree. I still remember it vividly.
As we grew up, the holidays still remained the same, but the players on the stage have changed a few times. My parents eventually divorced. My father, ironically, joined another religious denomination years ago and they don’t celebrate holidays. So, Dad disappeared from our holiday gatherings. My mother remarried and my stepfather became a huge part of my life, and stepped into our holiday rituals with ease; he was not close with his own family, so he adopted ours as his own. My sister married and moved far away, and although she and I are close, I rarely see her, especially on holidays. After my stepfather passed away a few years ago, my mother and I had a falling out ourselves. My mother seems to have a history of having these with family members. Although I still miss the times I spent with my family during the holiday season, the traditions and enjoyment I get from those traditions is too great for me to have stopped celebrating things the way I always have. I realized years ago, it’s not necessarily the physical presence of family that defines the holiday season so much as the traditions and memories made through the practice of those traditions. The memories are always with me, and so in a sense, so is the family. I am alone, and yet I am not. But am I lonely? Well, I would be lying if I said that at times I was not. However, life is about change, and sometimes accepting things that have changed that we cannot do anything about. Perhaps that is why it is so important that I retain as many traditions and rituals during the holiday season that I can. It’s my way of holding not just the memories close, but the people, too. And I still have my own little family here with me, snoozing away, happy and content.
So, as I have become more independent, become more and more comfortable with my life, and have come to know exactly who I am, I have created my own little routines for the holiday season, infused heavily with a lifetime of traditions and memories, and I can celebrate them in my own way, on my own timeline, and enjoy the freedom it affords. I would never want to be stuck in airports or freeways during the holiday season; what a dreadful, stressful way to spend it! The pressure of purchasing gifts you can’t really afford but do so to save face, and hoping the recipients will like and appreciate them…or even worse, receiving a horrible gift you have to pretend to like. I’ll buy myself a gift, if I have the money and feel like doing so…and I’m pretty sure I know what I will like. I enjoy the idea of paring down the holiday season to a few very simple basics, and celebrating them without worry, stress, or pressure…where the only stress I have is whether or not a string of lights may burn out. It’s a pretty wonderful feeling because it allows me to simply enjoy. I mean, isn’t that the whole point of the season…to enjoy it, really enjoy it, and make yourself happy doing so?
Blessings and love,
- JPD
