It's Okay to Hate the Holidays

Mara here:

"It's the most wonderful time of the year."

That's what everyone tells us. It's Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and New Years! Everyone is happy, right?

I was recently with a friend who hates the holidays, and I could tell she feels a lot of guilt about feeling that way. And then she feels angry that she feels guilty. Most of all though, she simply doesn't want to have to endure months of being surrounded by reminders that it's a time when everyone thinks you should feel happy even if you don't.

She's not alone.

We grow up thinking we have to like the holidays. We grow up thinking when it's the holidays, everyone feels joyful. We grow up thinking there must be something wrong with us if we don't feel the same way everyone else does.

For many of us, when we were children, the holidays were magical. Houses got decorated. We got time off school. There were candy and baked goods all over the place. And, of course, there were presents. It's not until we're adults and suddenly have the responsibility to create this magical happiness that is supposed to appear out of nowhere at the start of November, that we realize the holidays are a mixed bag.


What people don't like to talk about is that the holidays come with a lot of pressure.  First of all, there's pressure to celebrate the holidays at all. (Some people don't.) There's pressure identify with a religion. (Some people don't.) There's pressure to have loved ones to celebrate with. (Some people don't.) There's pressure to have money to decorate houses and buy lots of gifts. (Some people don't.) There's pressure to stop everything in your life to accommodate the holidays. (Some people can't.) There's pressure to have happy memories of holidays past. (Some people don't.)

There's a lot of pressure to love the holidays. Some people don't.

Here's the thing...just as with everything else in life, we all have different experiences. For some people, the holidays are painful. Some people had childhood experiences that make the holidays hard to enjoy. But since most people don't run around wanting to air their personal experiences in public, people who don't enjoy the holidays feel they have to pretend to enjoy them anyway.

Because if you don't express love for the holidays people will question you. Or worse, people will automatically think there's something "wrong" with you.

There's nothing wrong with not feeling love for the holidays.

It's okay to not enjoy them. It's okay to not feel the same way everyone else does. In fact, a lot of people feel dread when Fall rolls around and people realize that the barrage of festivities is about to bear down on them.

Even someone like me who does mostly does love the holidays, feels the stress of holiday madness. There's a lot of forced cheerfulness. There's a lot of expectation. There's a lot of change of routine.

For many families, the holidays are a huge financial burden. You can love Christmas and still feel a huge amount of responsibility (and subsequent stress) to live up to other people's expectations. So many of those expectations are directly related to money. We need money in today's world to celebrate the way everyone tells us we should.

Even though I have the good fortune to not feel overly burdened about the financial aspect of the holidays, buying presents is still very stressful. There's all this pressure to give good gifts. There's all this judgment about how thoughtful gifts are. And there's a lot of judgment about whether gifts are made versus bought and the stigma against gift cards or cash. 

Good grief people! We need to seriously give everyone a break. I buy lots of gift cards and give out a lot of cash. It's not because I'm lazy or don't care. It's because I feel a huge amount of anxiety about buying presents people like. I feel awful when I feel as if people don't like the gifts—not because I feel rejected or my feelings are hurt—but because I honestly want people to have gifts they will enjoy.

So for older kids, I started giving them cash for everything. If people want to think it's because I can't be bothered to think about personal gifts, they are welcome to think that. It's really because it's not worth it to make myself crazy and end up not giving a gift because I'm too worried that recipient won't like it. And seriously, why would anyone complain about cash?

Enough about presents. Let's more onto family.

Ah, family.

We all love our families, but that doesn't mean it's easy or that we always have a good time. Relationships with our parents or siblings are complicated. And just because we are related to people doesn't mean we choose to spend a lot of time together. You can love people without liking them. You can even love people without wanting to spend a lot of time with them.

Even in families who have good relationships, getting together under circumstances where there is an expectation for everyone to be "happy" can be difficult. It's a busy time. There's a lot going on in everyone's lives during normal times. Add in parties, buying gifts, wrapping and shipping gifts, decorating your house, sending out holiday cards on top of your already busy life...and by the time we actually manage to get to wherever it is we're going for the holidays, we're usually exhausted.

And being exhausted can make it hard to enjoy ourselves and that makes us even more unhappy. There's guilt associated with telling ourselves it's wrong to feel the way we feel.

In addition, there are a people who don't have family or close friends to share their holidays with. There are people who have lost loved ones. And, for many of our readers, chronic illness has made being with family and friends impossible. Holidays can be particularly hard for people who feel isolated.

I won't pretend to have all the answers. I don't. All I really hope people will keep in mind is that there's no right or wrong way to feel about the holidays. There's no should or shouldn't, and other people don't have to understand or accept why you feel the way you feel.

If you're not comfortable with the feelings that you have during the holidays, it's perfectly valid to explore those feelings. If you're feeling unhappy about how you feel, instead of worrying about feeling the feeling, take the time and energy to explore how you could change the way you experience the holidays. If doing holiday-themed things isn't fun for you, plan things that you do enjoy. Or plan to have no plan.

Do whatever works for you. And give yourself as much kindness as you can; you deserve it.

It's okay to love the holidays.

And it's okay to hate the holidays.

Here's what I asked my mom about this subject:

As someone who is chronically ill, I know the holidays are hard for you. Can you share some of your feelings?

When I first became ill and couldn't travel to see family or even hang out for long with them when they came to our house, it was heartbreaking. I cried a lot. I was bombarded with a lot of painful emotions: anger, resentment, frustration...and a general sense that life was being unfair to me and that I was letting everyone down.

It took me about five years to start to accept that this was how things were for me and that my negative reactions were only making a difficult situation worse. I still feel bad at times, but it's nothing like it used to be and I'm able to bounce back from it more quickly.

How has your Buddhist practice helped you accept the effect of chronic illness on the holidays?

The Buddha's teachings have made all the difference to me. In fact, I've written several articles for Psychology Today online on this very subject. Here are two of them:

"How to Ease the Pain of Isolation During the Holidays" and 
"Surviving the Holidays When You're Chronically Ill."

In these articles I talk about how I've learned to make the best of the holidays even though illness and pain limit so severely what I can do. Rather than repeat what I said it them, I'll just tell you what you'll find if you read them. 

The first article covers how to cultivate self-compassion, how to learn to feel happy for others who are able to celebrate the holidays fully, and a practice called tonglen, which comes from the Tibetan Buddhist tradition (not my particular Buddhist tradition), but is a powerful way to ease suffering when you're feeling isolated.

The second article contains four strategies for making the holidays as stress-free as possible. I wrote it with the chronically ill in mind, but re-reading it right now, I think these are good strategies for everyone.

Take good care of yourselves during the holidays, dear readers.