I have probably experienced the holiday blues to some extent. I never really took this phenomenon very seriously, but it is true that whenever the holiday season came around I would always end up feeling somewhat empty or that I wasn’t living my holidays up to par if I didn’t have any plans. However, this feeling doesn’t seem to be so prominent whenever I do actually have somewhere to be or people to spend the holiday season with. Why is that though? Does this empty feeling or sense of loneliness come from being alone during this time? Do I feel loneliness because I am comparing myself to others who are not alone? Or are my holiday blues a manifestation of the mix between both these factors?
Last year when I was living in the Netherlands my aunt warned me, “Make sure you go somewhere or make plans with friends or the cold and Christmas will get to you.” My response was to simply brush that comment off with a laugh. How could the cold and Christmas really make you feel a certain way if you aren’t truly lonely? Although I did have plans to spend Christmas with my friends, this made me question my past experiences and whether or not what I had felt before could be considered the blues or whether it was linked to some kind of innate loneliness I had possibly been suspicious of already.
For someone like myself who is very independent, I have only recently noticed that I really feared being alone during the holiday season. In fact, I think I assumed that if I wasn’t with people, it would make me lonely. However, this thinking may be completely flawed. My feelings of solitude could be explained by the societal expectation to be surrounded by people during this time of year. It is very true that during this time, exposure to those celebrating Christmas may make one feel as if being alone is somewhat abnormal. This may amplify an aura of discomfort with being alone and lead to temporary loneliness, aka, the holiday blues.
Due to multiple elements such as the fact that most of us have days off during this time, the consensus that this period is for family, or the idea of needing to be surrounded by people to be in the ‘holiday spirit,’ it is very easy for us to get swept away with feeling like our holidays are inadequate if otherwise. However, one point that I’d like to bring up is the possibility that these blues are just heightened feelings of underlying loneliness that may have already existed before the holidays. For those of us who were already trying to navigate through the perplexities of what it means to be lonely and understanding their comfort or discomfort with aloneness, the holidays are definitely a confronting time of year.
There may be somewhat of an inextricable link that seems to forge between the holidays, loneliness, and being alone. Although not mutually exclusive, it is very common for all these factors to be experienced simultaneously. If you are feeling the holiday blues this season, rest assured that it isn’t permanent and that you can control how much you let yourself feel by setting yourself realistic expectations of the holidays. If you are typically comfortable with being on your own, why should you let the way others spend their holidays trigger something in you? Some introspective thinking about possible concealment of loneliness may also help you find comfort in knowing that it is something you can work on, and that hijacking your own happiness is not the way to go. We can all feel lonely sometimes especially during the holidays, and that’s okay – as long as we don’t let ourselves be consumed by it.