[hulu id=kraec9o2vqr4vca8opaw3a width=512]
I’m sure I don’t need to point this out to any of you, but the holidays are just around the corner. While many of you will be decking the halls and celebrating, it can also be a tough time of year if you’re still working your way through that delicate phase of trying to get to grips with a life without children, and figuring out how your particular kind of family fits in.
It took me several years to fall back in love with the holidays. I hid from trick or treaters for a number of years, and Mr. Fab and I spent a couple of Thanksgivings out of town, dodging family obligations. One particularly miserable year, we decided to stay at home and celebrate Christmas alone, but when the time rolled around, neither of us had it in us to make merry. With no tree and no big family dinner, it was the farthest I’ve ever drifted from my expectations of how the holidays should be.
This year, if the weather ever drops below 90 degrees here in Los Angeles, I plan to get into the holiday spirit and put out my few Halloween decorations. I’m at the point now where the steady stream of impossibly cute trick or treaters doesn’t upset me, so I’ll probably stay in and hand out candy (perhaps one for the trick or treaters, one for me.) Mr. Fab and I will celebrate Thanksgiving in a very non-traditional way by biking to the beach for a picnic, and I’ll be renting a living Christmas tree from my friend’s company come December.
But for now, I’m celebrating that it’s not yet the holidays. And if you’re celebrating too and need a little comic relief, please enjoy Christina Applegate’s opening monologue on the topic from last week’s Saturday Night Live.
If you are steeling yourself for the coming season and could use a little moral support, please consider hanging out with me on Monday, October 29th at 5:30pm PST. I’ll be hosting a live call-in session where I’ll share some suggestions for getting through the difficult holiday season and answering some of your most pressing questions. I’ll also be talking about an opportunity to get on-going support throughout the season this year.
If you’d like to join the call or catch the recording later, please register here and I’ll send out the call access details.
If you have a question or topic you’d like to hear covered, please post it in the comments and I’ll make sure it gets included.
Thank you for the video – hilarious. I love Christina Applegate. It’s nice to see how long her career has been, especially as a woman. I have hidden from holidays in the past too. The last few years I have really enjoyed handing out candy on Halloween. I have a pet bunny who acts like a puppy and I dress him up in a costume and the kids love him. My husband and I have also hosted Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter for my family of 20+ for the past 6 years ever since my sisters both got divorced. It has been really hard because they show up and literally do nothing — one year I invited a couple friends and they couldn’t believe no one helped with clean up after dinner. Last year I tried to get my sister to do Easter and she dumped it on my 76 year old mother who is living with heart failure. Since I had to go to my mother’s and do everything at her house, I have resigned myself to the fact I will be doing every holiday forever. My husband however wants to take a trip this year and if he can get off of work, I told him it sounds like a great idea.
Maria — Get out of town! Seriously. You’ve done enough. One year, my husband I took ourselves out to a movie then to a steak house, just the two of us, for a completely nontraditional feast. We had a ball.
Lisa — The timing of this is perfect. I feel like I’ve been dusting off my armor in preparation for the season. I love the holidays — all of them — and yet I find myself anticipating the hurts. I have a couple of fun options for Halloween, I think I’ve got a solid plan for Thanksgiving, but Christmas…right now my best option involves a couple of cocktails on the 24th and sleeping through the 25th. I eagerly await your sage advice.
Thanks Kathleen. I know my husband wants to go home to Minnesota this year to see his family for either Thanksgiving or Christmas and if we can do it we are going. As an FYI, Christmas Eve is our alone time. My family calls the week before every year asking me what’s going on Christmas Eve. I always tell them, I don’t know what you are doing, but we are having a quiet evening, just the two of us. Two days in a row with all of them is just too much.
I loved that monologue! We actually stayed up late enough to watch SNL last Saturday and I was agreeing with her the whole time! I hate that the “holidays” (read: Halloween and Christmas) have to be “celebrated” for two and a half freaking months, and I hate the commercialism. I can barely even get a spiritual moment out of Christmas anymore. Even when we went to a Christmas Eve service last year, it seemed rushed and half-done, and they were just trying to get us out of there so they could get ready for the next service! There were like three in a row that night, at a very large chain-church in my area. How spriritual can that possibly be?? Anyway, like I already said yesterday we are hoping to get out of town for Christmas and avoid my brother, the jerk, and his cracked-out girlfriend, who I’m sure he’ll bring to Chrismas, because he’s that big of a douchebag. (He’s still married to his wife, btw, they’re just separated.) My mom just texted me today asking what I thought about having the adults choose names for Christmas gifts, so I have to figure out how to tell her we may not be coming. Maybe I could just say we’re switching to Judaism LOL…
I am NOT looking forward to the holidays–again. I used to dread it because, with us not having kids, we felt almost like outsiders in our own family. This year, it’s because my middle sister and I are not talking, and one of her ex-husbands has decided to take his kids to Florida over the break. The idea of spending two days with her snarking at me is not appealing. On the other hand, I don’t want her to feel she can’t go to her own mother’s house. We’re considering staying home and having a holiday with just our cats.
I’m trying to get back in to the spirit of the holidays, but it’s tough. I offered to work late on Halloween so I don’t have to hand out candy to trick or treaters. Last year I started taking Christmas themed photos of my dog so I can send out cute photo cards like I get from everyone with their kids. I’m thinking about hosting a Christmas party again this year, which I haven’t done in a long time. I figure if I keep myself really busy I won’t have time to think about not having kids to celebrate the holidays with.
We never get trick or treaters in my neighborhood. I buy the candy and then I end up eating it all myself. It seems parents nowadays take their small kids to trick or treat at the mall. Frankly, I find this sad… hard to get in the spirit of things when you don’t see people dressed up for Halloween. I’m ok with the holidays. The thing that is tough is not having much $$ these days. My brother and his family are well off, and we always get together Christmas Eve and open our gifts at Christmas. I’m glad they’re doing well, I just don’t like how the evening wraps up along the lines of how big a Christmas gift this was. It’s frustrating that I can’t shower my family with fancy gifts, and then I remind myself that this isn’t what it’s supposed to be about. Several of my family members passed away in December, and I especially miss them at these times. Hubs is usually overseas visiting his family at this time and I miss him too. :/ But the holidays are not as bad for me (thankfully because I still have my parents and my aunt). I try to focus on them on Mother’s Day, too.