Key points
- Holiday expectations can make joyful times feel like pressure or highlight emotional distance from others.
- Seasonal memories of loss or change can also stir up feelings of grief and loneliness.
- Shorter days and colder weather can make it harder to cope.
- Try to adjust your expectations, practice good self-care, and seek real connection where you can.
Halloween decorations seem to go up earlier every year, don’t they? Practically as soon as the summer ends and the kids go back to school, grocery stores begin to stock candy and set out plastic skeletons. But for many Americans, these displays aren’t welcome, because they announce the coming of the holiday season. They know that once Halloween has passed, Thanksgiving will take over for a few weeks and then lead directly into the rush of end-of-year holidays like Christmas. To many, this cascade of celebrations will mean good times with family and friends; to others, it’s a set of burdens in sequence. A 2023 survey by the American Psychological Association reported that 89 percent of U.S. adults feel more stressed during the holiday season, and a 2020 survey from the National Council for Mental Wellness reported that 70 percent of Americans feel some degree of loneliness as the holidays approach. Over and above that, more than 10 percent of us—the survey said—will feel lonely in a major way.
Source: Ferdous Hasan / Pexels / Creative Commons license
Five main phenomena account for this holiday-based loneliness. First, the expectation of having a good time over Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, or New Year’s Eve might feel more like a job than an opportunity—especially if it highlights the distance you might feel between yourself and those you love. The holidays can also often serve as anniversaries of a sort: at times when you’d very much like to be in the company of someone important, but can’t because of a death or a breakup, you are more likely to revisit feelings of loss or grief over those relationships. (The American Bar Association points out that grief and loss can intensify lonely feelings at this time of year.) And all of this takes place in the context of a very busy time of year that can overload us with supposedly fun social obligations, even as the weather gets colder, the days get shorter, and the chance to spend time outdoors has begun to diminish once again.
If you feel a burgeoning sense of duty around this time of year, you’re not alone. Movies, television, advertisements, and social media begin to spin up into an overwhelming chorus of would-be happiness and joy, as if in an effort to dominate whatever else you’re feeling each December. Consider the many holiday cards you may get from friends: Don’t the photos and their captions seem to imply that everyone else is feeling fantastic? If your personal reality doesn’t match what you’re seeing, you’ll experience a kind of cognitive dissonance: Why are they so happy, you may wonder, if I feel so isolated? Am I the only one? For some people, too, the American holiday machine brings with it strong feelings about complex family arrangements. Divorces, estrangements, and separations tend to divide people and complicate their traditions, which means that an ad for a Hallmark holiday movie might bring up past Christmases—or other holidays—in a way that’s more challenging than cheerful.
Even if you do have a close family—parents, kids, or other relatives with whom you’d love to celebrate—you might not be able to get together. Living far apart from your family and not necessarily having the means to travel freely might mean feeling forced to spend the holidays alone. Some younger adults, for instance, move to unfamiliar cities after graduating from college and may not have the resources to visit their families; similarly, as a Northwestern University study pointed out, some older adults have lost their friends or partners, which means that holidays can exacerbate preexisting feelings of isolation.
Holiday pressures, to be perfectly objective, often cohere into a difficult time for other, more practical reasons too. Daylight hours have begun to shrink (especially in the northern parts of our country), and there’s a prominent chill in the air. Going outside may be less fun under these conditions. Many Americans suffer from seasonal affective disorder, too, and for them, the encroaching darkness can make a bad mood worse. Most of us feel less inclined to get out of the house when the weather is cold, making it harder to spend time with friends.
And the opposite can be true, as well: Rather than feeling lonely, you might be crushed by social engagements you’d rather skip. Often, the holidays bring on an unwanted slate of additional, burdensome responsibilities: buying gifts, hosting family members, or peak-hour travel. Your schedule may feel crowded with holiday parties, even if you’d prefer to stay home—parties that may present you with a lot of alcohol to drink and high-calorie food to eat. These social pressures can cut down on the time you might normally use for self-care, such as exercise, good nutrition, and relaxing into your favorite diversions. A survey by Wexner Medical Center in Ohio found that 46 percent of Americans say they have fewer opportunities to spend time alone during the holidays, even though more than half of Americans believe that this kind of alone time is important for their mental health.
If you’re not feeling excited about the holiday season—if you are getting a sense of dread and foreboding, instead—please remember, you are not as alone as you feel. It will help you to find ways to reach out to others, wherever you can; they may share your feelings, and even if not, may still be happy to hear from you. As I’ve noted elsewhere, there’s value in the so-called “weak ties” you build in connecting to the people in your community, so do your best to say hello to the people you see every day. Attend a holiday event at work; chat with a familiar stranger. Even if these people don’t play large roles in your life, there are real, positive feelings of connection to be gained from making the effort. Keep up your self-care regimen, too; as it always does, exercise can help regulate your mood and sleep schedule. Where possible, keep an eye on your nutrition even if you end up indulging a bit too much at a holiday party. Continue to pursue the activities you enjoy, not only those that the universe seems to be promoting. And if the holidays are an unusual burden to you each year—if loneliness grows to be too much—consider reaching out to a professional to talk about how you feel.
Most importantly, be aware that your expectations for the holiday season have a great deal to do with the way you experience it. You don’t need to go to the same parties, observe the same traditions, or enjoy the same things that others do. Keeping your expectations in check in this way might mean adjusting the way you consume movies, TV, and social media at this time of year; it might also mean a deliberate effort to challenge the narrative you’re hearing from popular culture. Try not to compare yourself to others. Instead, even as you practice solid self-care, spend more time on activities that work best for you at any time of year.
References
Brock, J. (2024). Effects of loneliness and isolation during the holidays. https://www.americanbar.org/groups/senior_lawyers/resources/voice-of-experience/2024-november/effects-of-loneliness-and-isolation-during-the-holidays/
Mental Health First Aid (2021). Loneliness: How to cope during the holiday season. Retrieved from https://www.mentalhealthfirstaid.org/2021/12/loneliness-how-to-cope-during-the-holiday-season/
Sadaf, M., Sasidhar. G., Abbas, M. (2024, April 20). Seasonal affective disorder. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK568745/
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