I’m not big into holidays. I never have been. I find them to be quite chaotic, stressful, overstimulating, wasteful, and well…fake. I’ve always looked at them as nothing more than a major tactic of capitalism under the guise of “tradition.” And each major holiday, without fail or exception, ALWAYS brings me the wondrous gift of major anxiety attacks.

There is a certain stigma that surrounds each pagan holiday. Easter is for baskets of chocolate and pastel-dyed eggs. Thanksgiving is for Turkey and football. Christmas is for spending a bunch of money you don’t have for the exchange of gifts you don’t need and over-eating. There is a lot of pressure to wear your “best” clothing and present yourself as some super happy excited human being to everyone in your life who already knows you well enough to know that’s just not who you are. What’s the point?

I notice that the general majority of people get incredibly excited and joyous about holidays. In drastic contrast, I get incredibly depressed, stressed, and overwhelmed. I’ve always been this way, and always thought there had to be something wrong with me.

Yesterday afternoon as I was isolating myself in my bedroom watching crime documentaries on Netflix pretending it was just another random Thursday while the kids played in the living room I contemplated, “Why are holidays always so hard for me? Even in the best of times?” I went and turned off the oven, turkey still inside. The boiled potatoes were un-mashed sitting in the pot of water. The drippings were in the pan waiting to be turned into gravy. I had to take a break from it all. It was a bit too much for me.

Once I triple-checked that I had turned all the burners off, overtaken with guilt, I headed back to my room to think about what could possibly be wrong with me. And I came to realize that holidays literally go against EVERYTHING I believe in. The phoniness. The drama. The intense pressure to participate in things you want nothing to do with for the sake of tradition. Same shit, different year. Over and over and over again. Conditional programming. Fitting the mold.

At that point in my thoughts I began to feel ungrateful. After all, holidays are about celebrating gratitude with your loved ones. I should be feeling nothing but blessed around the holidays. I’m no scrooge, and I AM grateful. So what do I do to fix my problem? That’s when I had a stunning realization: I can still participate joyfully, but in my OWN way.

I don’t have to dye eggs or roast a turkey or trim a tree to celebrate just because that’s what everyone else does. I’m not required to do the festive things everyone else feels the need to do around the holidays. NOT doing those things won’t hurt my family. We can celebrate in our own way, without ANY of the pressure. It’s okay if we sit around in our pajamas together watching documentaries, listening to non-festive music, eating grilled cheese for dinner on Thanksgiving. It’s okay to spend the entire holiday in a soup kitchen volunteering to serve food to those less fortunate than we are. It’s okay to donate items to families who are struggling more than we are. Our joy, after all, comes from truly giving from the heart to those who need uplifting.

I was super happy with my new outlook on holidays. I immediately went out to the living room to tell my kids my thoughts on how holidays should go from now on in our time together and asked their opinions. “Do you guys think you’d be ok with grilled cheese for dinner next Thanksgiving instead of all this madness that I really don’t like to do?” I asked.

“Of course, I don’t even really like turkey that much anyway,” replied Linkin. “I don’t care what we eat as long as you feed me,” stated Kam. “But what about the turkey you made tonight? I’m getting really hungry.”

The turkey! The un-mashed potatoes! The gravy! I had to finish dinner, and by now it was getting late. So together the 3 of us gathered in the kitchen and finished preparing dinner. And then we ate it, gratefully, knowing that it was probably the last time we’ll ever make a “traditional” Thanksgiving dinner again while talking about how great next Thanksgiving will be when we’re eating grilled cheese and not having a huge mess to clean up afterwards.

The most ironic part of the night was that the ONLY thing traditional about our Thanksgiving was the turkey. The boys literally sat on the kitchen counter in their underwear, each eating a giant turkey leg with no plate like Vikings. And that was the very BEST part of my night. It brought me great joy to realize that despite the turkey, we did Thanksgiving our own way after all.

We’re just gonna do holidays in our own weird way from now on. Unapologetically. The way we always should have done it. Whatever way makes us happy and content. And that makes me look forward to every holiday to come. ❤