How to survive the holidays

If you hate the holidays

Photo by Mattia on Unsplash

This time of year has never been my bag. I don’t enjoy Christmas music; loathe the colors red and green in combination; fail to find goofy light-up sweaters amusing; just basically can’t abide any of it. Growing up as a Jewish girl in Houston, the buildup to Christmas was an annual reminder of the difference between my family and most of those surrounding us. We didn’t celebrate that holiday, as some Jewish families around us did in order to better fit in, didn’t have a Christmas tree (or even a “Chanukah bush,” as some of them called their trees). We did observe Chanukah, but we all knew that that holiday ran a very a distant second to the excitement and seemingly wonderful excess of Christmas.

My feelings about the holidays really haven’t changed much as an adult—I still find it to be an distinctly unmooring time of year, and tougher—in lots of new, adult ways—than it was when I was a kid. But I’ve also figured out some better ways to handle it, which I will share with you now.

Create new traditions In my early 40s, just after my divorce, I was living in a bachelorette pad on lower Fifth Avenue and feeling lonely, just in general, but then quite a lot as the holidays rolled around. Most of my friends were occupied with young children and fabulous-sounding vacations. My mom, her husband, and my brothers and their families would all leave town on or near Christmas day. It was the bleakest, most solitary time of year for me, during a period of my life in which I felt solitary a lot of the time.

Then one year, my older brother Mike suggested I meet him and his family at Knickerbocker, a restaurant near where I lived, on Christmas Eve, for dinner. It was a warm and fun evening, and I was touched by the invitation, knowing that Mike and his wife Shirim most likely extended it because they knew it was a tough time for me. The next year, we went to Knickerbocker again, and we’ve been doing it every Christmas Eve since then, for the past 15 years or so. Now the entire family attends, and it’s a whole thing, and I can honestly say I actually look forward to Christmas Eve.