For many people, including myself, the year-end festivities are often replete with food and drink, and friend and family get-togethers. In the media industry, seasonal schmoozing is also an expected annual affair.
But as much as I love to make merry, I prefer to be consistent with my mingling throughout the year than breathlessly cram numerous reunions into a month, only to exit the holiday season desperate for another holiday to recharge.
Truthfully, my ideal Christmas and New Year’s Day would be spent doing what I’d do on any other public holiday – which is essentially a day off from work.
Sleep in. Run errands. Work out. Catch up on reading. Binge-watch TV shows or movies I’ve saved for a stretch of free time. Avoid the usual public holiday crowd in the usual public holiday attractions. And most important, have no fixed schedule.
Yet for all my self-assuredness any other time of the year, I’ve rarely managed to spend Christmas and New Year’s Day the way I secretly desire. I often caved in to peer pressure and FOMO to celebrate these occasions, convincing myself that painting the town red was the solution to holiday blues.
No surprise: I sometimes felt lonelier with a packed calendar than I would having no plans.
EXTERNAL EXPECTATIONS
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for using the festivities to get together. But only when I want to, not when I believe I should.
“Aligning with conventional holiday practices” may seem like a way to mitigate feelings of isolation, as does engaging in “socially normative” activities, which can provide a “temporary sense of belonging or distraction from being alone”, the principal clinical psychologist at Annabelle Psychology also acknowledged.
