It’s Your Holiday, Too

At the risk of sounding entirely too individualistic, it’s your holiday, too.

And yes, the holidays are about being with others, sharing our joy, exchanging gifts, and eating a good meal together. But for some of you, you’ve spent your entire life organizing yourself around people for a day that you absolutely hate and wish would end the entire time you’re there. You leave yourself and your comfort completely out of the equation.

You spend the entire day making a meal you don’t like, or carting your three kids under five to a house with glass figurines on the coffee table and dinner that’s served at 9 PM. Maybe you spend all your time and energy looking for gifts for people you don’t even feel connected to, only to end up receiving a pair of socks or a shirt in the wrong size from them. You’re exhausted and you wish you could enjoy yourself for even a moment sometime between January and December.

It’s not that you don’t want to do things for others, or that you only care about yourself. The problem is, you’ve spent every single holiday solely caring for others, with absolutely no one caring for you.

And I know, the holidays are about shared joy, but is it really shared if you’re the only one not getting any of it?

At some point, you start to realize that everyone else is celebrating while you’re surviving. You’re coordinating, cleaning, smoothing things over, predicting blow-ups, or bracing for them. You’re managing everyone else’s emotions, their comfort, their preferences, their feelings, while completely ignoring your own.

And when the day is finally over, you don’t feel grateful. You feel relief because you made it through another one.

I know it can feel almost shameful to say out loud: I don’t like the holidays.

You might worry it makes you cold, or ungrateful, or broken in some way. But you’re not. You’re just tired of pretending. You’re tired of showing up to something that’s supposed to be joyful but never feels that way for you.

For some of you, the holidays were never peaceful to begin with. They were loud, stressful, or full of people who didn’t feel safe. Maybe you were the one trying to keep the peace while your parents fought. Maybe you were the one making sure everyone else felt okay. Maybe you learned that “togetherness” always came at your expense.

And so now, as an adult, you repeat it. You keep showing up, hoping it’ll be different, that this year everyone will get along, that you’ll feel connected, that you’ll finally get to relax. But the script never changes.

So I want to ask you something: what would it look like if this holiday included you, too?

What if you made a meal you actually liked?What if you didn’t have to drive across the state or pretend to enjoy the chaos?What if you could prioritize safety over obligation?What if you didn’t have to explain or defend wanting something different?

You’re not selfish for wanting comfort or calm. You’re not a bad person for wanting to rest or to spend the day with people who actually make you feel seen. That’s not abandoning your family, it’s remembering that you’re part of it, too.

Before you automatically say yes to every plan or tradition, take a second and ask yourself:

• What would make this holiday meaningful for me?
• What am I doing because I want to, and what am I doing because I’m supposed to?
• What version of the holiday would actually feel good in my body?

The holidays don’t have to be an endurance test. You don’t have to earn your right to joy by overfunctioning. It’s your holiday, too.