As the winter holidays are approaching, a lot of us feeling the pressure of surrounding ourselves with family. However, many people are spending the holidays alone for many reasons. In fact, if I think of all the possible scenarios that prevent people from gathering together during the holidays I think the majority is actually spending them alone. Despite that, there is still a lot of pressure and judgment that they receive. Let’s see possible scenarios and what to do about them.

• Let’s break it down: do you really need to be by yourself? (if you are). Let’s say your family is not with you and you are single and all your friends have other plans. That still does not make you alone – if you want a company, you can always attend meet up events, find or start online gathering of people who are in the same situation, host a party for all the singles or spend the holidays by volunteering or helping others. It does not have to be the soup kitchen, there are places where lonely people actually are who will appreciate you sharing your time with them, for example, nursing home. If you do not want to do any of these things and to actually be amongst people (which is fine too), then accept that it is your choice to be alone. In other words, why would you feel bad for something you choose to do? And if you choose to be alone, you can shift your mindset from feeling like a victim/left out (if you do) and focus on making the best out of the situation.
• Why do you need to be alone? I understand that sometimes all kinds of horrible and traumatic things happen. And if this is your case, do know that you can take a break for yourself and treat holidays as an opportunity to grieve or have the space without forcing social obligations on yourself. In fact, you can still meet people just keep it low key and do not force yourself to go all out. I would also recommend to distract yourself by focusing on other things, for example, adopting a pet, improving your living space (from full scale construction to just getting nice plates or glasses). By the way, that’s what Chanel did when she lost the love of her life. You can also do at least one thing related to your apperance (massage, facial, manicure, getting new clothing, haircut, etc.), signing up for a course or marathone or something that will mentally inspire you, taking a walk outside regularly, and attempting to cook something ambitious just for the fun of it. Also, maybe look into seeing a therapist if things are getting gloomy. Sending you hugs.
• How about the family? There is a heavy emphasis by the media, marketing companies, popular culture, etc. that holidays are about gathering together with the family, ideally entire extended family aka Lampoons’ style, but would this actually give us a holiday spirit? Coming from an immigrant family, all my extended family is back in another country so it is just my immediate family here. When I was growing up, my parents would celebrate all holidays with their friends so I would get stuck with their friends’ children that I would have to friend with or babysit. And when I was in my 20s, family celebration would be watching a tv together or watching my parents celebrate with their friends. Imagine you are surrounded by family but you are a ghost and no one really sees you or cares how you are. In essense, being with the family did not help me to feel festive. In fact, it made me feel less festive than before I met them as I assumed it would be special and had high expectations of a cozy family gathering but felt dissapointed and sad instead after the event every time. Personally, celebrating holidays with my husband and friends felt more special. It is all about my mental health for me now and I do not recommend forcing yourself to be surrounded by people who really would not notice if you were not there or would not notice if you were sad. You have the right to surround yourself with people that appreciate you regardless if they are related to you or not – you owe it to yourself. If your family is amazing and you feel loved but for whatever reason cannot celebrate with them, you can still give them a call, do facetime or even send a paper greeting card.
• What are the holidays really about? Each holiday has several meanings – historical meaning when it started, what society generally defines it to be today, what you grew up doing/how your family is celebrating and what this holiday actually means to you. For example, to me the New Year is about reflecting on previous year, celebrating present and being excited about the future. There was a year when I had a falling out with my family and like 98 percent of friends at the same time (different reasons) so it was just me and my new husband basically and I had to create my own traditions. Now we do them every year. Do whatever feels festive and right to you.
• Fear of being alone. As I write it, I remember when I was turning 17 my best friend could not make it to my birthday. I felt this horror of being alone on my birthday that I ended up inviting a group of people (friends of the friends) that I barely knew. We had fun and we never spoke again after my birthday. The real question is – if you think of being alone for the holidays and you have this cold fear in the chest, is it really about being alone? Or is it about admitting to yourself that the way your life right now is not working? In my case, it took several years to understand that people I had grew up with (family, friends) made me feel alone but I did not want to admit it to myself because then I would have to do something about it and I was not ready to let them go. Sometimes you need to let people go from your life if they do not appreciate or love you. This will give you space and time for (new) people in your life who will actually care as well as the time to do something for yourself. In fact, this is how this blog was born – I no longer had all these events to go to (falling out with friends) and it gave me time to do something I really like. It is better to have few people in your life who really care for you then tens or hundreds that do not really care. I honestly believe that surrounding yourself with wrong people causes stress, anxiety and all kinds of illnesses.
• So you chose to be by yourself on Christmas/New Years/Hanukkah/other winter holiday – now what? Well, you got options there. You can pretent the holiday does not exist and treat it like any other weekend day (denial). Or you can find a way to celebrate it that’s meaningful to you. Create your own traditions. Instead of feeling bad about not having your family or friends around, focus on making the holiday fun and enjoyable for yourself. Get yourself a gift that you wish someone who loves you (you!) would get you and wrap it. Put an effort in dressing up, setting up christmas tree and making or getting the food and drinks you like. You can treat yourself, take yourself on a festive date or connect with someone online like it is 2020. Look for miracles, make wishes, write yourself a letter from the future (to yourself in this year), do something nice for others, watch a movie you always wanted to watch/liked but were criticized by others. Just remember that being alone on holidays technically is not the worst thing in the world (there are wars, natural disasters, etc.), so have no fear, it is just a holiday and it will pass too.