Did anyone else spend the holidays alone?

Human families splitting up an spreading themselves across the country or even across continents is not how humans evolved to survive and thrive. The nuclear family, make your own way bullshit was a lie made up by real estate developers post WWII. And, everyone just buys into it no matter how much proof their is that it is making everyone miserable, depressed, lonely, and suicidal at record rates.

Merry Christmas, OP. I’m glad you’re here celebrating with us. What do you have for dinner? What was your best Christmas gift you received as a kid? Did you do anything festive leading up to Christmas?

R1 there has been a recent push to further the division of families and I am seeing it everywhere. In different ways. Not always direct.

I agree the family needs to be re-prioritized for a healthy society.

My family is basically my mom as I'm not close with my brother. He and my mom live in my hometown. I moved cross country.

I visit for Christmas but we don't celebrate Christmas. I had dinner with my mom over the weekend but spent the days on my own. I'll see a couple of childhood friends this week but that's about it. I've been away for nearly 20 years and I'm down to 2 old friends now. I'm afraid I may lose them too eventually. I remind myself to keep up with them even if I'm naturally not good at it

I was alone today.

I'm alone every Christmas, which is fine with me. I don't celebrate it, but I made lasagna last night for my elderly landlord, because he's a widower who gets depressed during the holiday season.

I have a few family members I really like and some who are tolerable in small doses, but they all live back in Ohio. I don't think I would have done much with any of them, even if I lived there, because I'm not a weed smoker any more nor a drinker, which are the activities they structure their boring parties around.

You can organise an orphan's picnic.

A picnic with just three people is preferable to domestic solitude.

OP, I suggest you plan earlier next year, before the other "orphans" have already made other arrangements.

All of my friends know I host Christmas, so I always have plenty of people around. I like to cook, but i've done an occasional year where I ordered pretty much everything if I've been too busy.

Alone. But I am used to it. Ex passed away 10 year ago (I am a young widower). I was in my 40s when he died. My parents are both in a Nursing Home and alzheimers. I was closest with my sister and she died a few years ago. All alone. Not interested in dating. I am anti-social so I have no interest in going to anyones house and pretending to have a merry x-mas.

True Story = I thought about having a Merry Average Joe X-Mas. Just a random whore/slut orgy with nameless guys. But the weather had to ruin it.

^ I guess you have your books to comfort you.

R11 = And porn.

Merry Christmas r9. You are not alone. You’re here with friends, me.

[quote]A picnic with just three people is preferable to domestic solitude.

Depends... I prefer solitude, probably because I have so many people making demands on me in a group setting at work, and a needy sister.

Yes, and I'm pissed off that the Burger King, Taco Bell and Panda Express by my house were all closed!

I had Christmas alone last year. I was let down by a man. This year I made the effort to travel back to family. At the end of the day when you’re on your death bed I don’t think a couple of bad christmases will be the thing that you regret. Although lonely, the best thing to do is to ride it out, watch loads of good tv and make the most of it.

My parents are long gone and I am not close to my brother, who lives across the ocean. I am used to being alone on the holidays. Sometimes it sucks but I have found ways of distracting myself. Binge a show you’ve been meaning to watch, stuff your face with delicious food even if it’s only you, hang out here on DL. It’s just like any other day when you aren’t religious and don’t have kids.

Might be good for you to give back on Christmas. Volunteer somewhere.

Not only did I spend the day alone, I was the only tenant in my entire building all day/night.

I spent it alone, OP. (And I can also relate to r19: the parking lot of my apartment complex pretty much emptied out on the 24th.)

Zoomed with family for a bit, but spent the rest of the day listening to music, surfing the web, and cleaning my apartment. Lifted weights in the evening.

I wanna kill myself. Anyone?

Kinda. I spent it with my parents and they’re not all there anymore with strokes and probable dementia. So while they’re still alive and here it still feels like something’s missing.

I hope you're trolling, r21

Yes, OP. 85 year old Golden Girls worshiping "orphans" are sad.

I guess I'm the only one who spends Christmases alone and doesn't need a pity party to assuage me.

I had to work until 6:30 p.m. on Saturday and I have to be at work at 7 a.m. today (12/26).

Who has time to sit and feel sorry for themselves?

I like my sister, but I'd rather enjoy a nice, relaxing day off.

its just another day.

but it's geared towards family/loved ones.

be happy. it's a choice.

r9's parents are alone in a nursing home. dump them and leave them, cunt?

This homily is SO TRUE --- "Friends are relatives that each one chooses for himself."

Yeah, alone this year. Again. I did get invites, but politely declined. It was pretty much just another day for me. The only emotion I felt was, 'I can't WAIT until everyone STOPS moaning and jabbering over Christmas!' It gets so annoying and drama-laden. It's ONE FUCKING DAY, people!!!!

Well the birthday boy did a hell of a lot worse than spend Christmas alone. he was born in a freezing manger with parents eager to get on in order to pay Roman tax collectors and then he died like this:

^^^Well, like that but with nails in every extremity so it would pull and tear and bleed as well as the rest.

Even jihadists don't do THAT anymore, apparently.

People are so emotional. So what you were alone on a made up special day. Who cares.

It’s simply amazing how soft and weak-minded some of you. You whine about getting older. Whine about being alone. Holy shit. Grow a pair!

Christmas has only been going all around the world for roughly 2000 years, r32, but I'm sure YOU know better.

My earlier point was that the majority spend it alone, and it's still an important celebration because the man being celebrated was literally shred to bits, while hanging and being asphyxiated very slowly, in front of everyone he ever knew. If he can do that, than celebrating his birthday should be relatively ok no matter how bad it felt to be alone.

[quote] Anywho,

That's why you spent it alone.

[quote] Human families splitting up an spreading themselves across the country or even across continents is not how humans evolved to survive and thrive.

????

You pulled that one right out of your ass.

If that were true, we'd all be living in concentric circles forming around the Olduvai Gorge in Africa.

[quote]there has been a recent push to further the division of families...the family needs to be re-prioritized for a healthy society

There are far too many unhealthy families for this to ever be true on any meaningful scale.

R35, you are ignorant. Go read up on some anthropology and cultural evolution. Even today, the vast, vast majority of people live within 15 minutes of where they grew up. And that's in America. The rest of the world stays much closer to extended family.

R36, people and families are unhealthy because there is no longer any loyalty or cohesion at the community level. Of course there are shit families. There have always been shit families. But that's still not how humans evolved and the dissolving of community familial structure is the basis of many of our societal ills.

I'm sorry for you, OP, and anyone else who feels so lonesome during the holidays. I hope you weren't inconsolably saddened. If you dont have already, and if you're able, then get a pet! Having pets makes a difference. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, OP!

I am alone almost all the time but I have the benefit of just not getting lonely. Yes I am aware I am quite weird. I enjoy my own company much more than the company of others. It works for me.

However if I did get lonely around Christmas there are organizations that do a multitude of activities for the poor and the needy. I would volunteer to help those less fortunate.

Elder here. Family all gone, lost most close friends to illness, retired so no work friends . Stopped accepting well meaning holiday invites. Who wants to spend the day with others' families? I spend the holiday at a casino, or treat myself to a play and night in the city, or plan a very nice dinner with a good bottle of wine and watch a favorite film.

People who moan about being alone haven't lived long enough, or been paying attention. If you are fortunate enough to be in reasonable health, have enough funds to live decently, and are able to care for yourself then lucky you. Companionship, love, family are great but in the end one has to have inner resources.

I have one sister left and spent the holiday with her. I am close with her but other than that have no one else. I have cousins but am not close with them and have a few close friends who don't live that close to me.

Yes. I binge watched The Gilded Age and loved it. The costumes were scrumptious.

I didn’t this year, but for me it’s the dream.

[quote]I have siblings thousands of miles away but we're not likely to ever see each other again. Ever

While obviously a choice you're making, in this day and age wtih zoom and facetime, it's easy to stay in touch with people if you wanted to do so.

It’s also better to be alone than to be stuck dealing with miserable relatives…cunty frau cousins, MAGAt uncles, spoiled brat nephews and nieces. Wouldn’t you rather be lounging at home in your comfy caftan?

The secretary at work is from the UK. She has one sibling, a sister who lives in Australia. The parents, now late 70s/early 80s, now live back in the UK; they initially retired to France, but returned to the UK because of brexit and not knowing how things were going to play out. Going to Australia is cost prohibitive according to her and they don’t want to come here. I just keep thinking, what’s going to happen when they can no longer care for themselves? According to her, they were good parents and she talks to them once a week, but it doesn’t seem to occur to either her or her sister that they need to get a plan in place.

The hardest part is when people ask “what are you doing for Christmas?”

I just say, oh I spent it with my little brother who lives in Polk County, Florida.

I don’t say, oh, I spent it in a transient hotel (that my dumbass bro suggested)

OP- Watch this.

On my first Christmas alone (post the breakup of the nearest thing I’ve ever had to a ltr) I felt lonely and depressed and had crying fits all day.

Yesterday I enjoyed my day alone, by choice, not being obligated to eat unhealthy foods I didn’t really want, risk exposure to the tripledemic or deal with anybody’s psychodrama (which is what being with family means in my family.) Circumstances make all the difference.

It wasn't the plan, but the weather intervened. At least I was stuck at home and not in some airport or in my car on the highway.

A tall, self-obsessed, rich woman once said—

"Life is a banquet and most people are starving".

Dear OP, I suggest you stay at home and masturbate. The internet can bring a banquet of delights to your living room, every day.

[quote] [R35], you are ignorant.

Mary, I am a tenured college professor.

Try again.

You can be in a room full of people and still feel alone.

I was alone, but I'm usually alone for Christmas and I enjoy it. I've just never been that guy who needed a lot of people around me. This Christmas I've been watched old episodes of the NBC soap, The Doctors, and have been having a great time all by myself.

My Mom died last year and I miss her and thought about her, because she really loved Christmas, but that's really the only thing that made me, temporarily, sad.

I don’t have anything anyone wants.

I spent it alone. I only talk to my parents by phone because it’s for the best. They know what they did.

OP, take some inspiration from our inspiring dusky lady-hero!

R57 Do people celebrate Kwanzaa? Or is this like a Kamala thing?

R58, Didn’t Colin Powell celebrate Kwanzaa?

I was alone for Christmas…but it’s okay; flying to the islands tomorrow for a week with my friends for New Year’s.

I didn't -- but now I wish I had.

[quote]It's ONE FUCKING DAY, people!!!

Yes, and we've been dealing with the buildup for that "ONE FUCKING DAY "since September. Stores start putting their Christmas shit out in the early fall and by mid November, it's all, BLACK FRIDAY-this, and PERFECT GIFT-that. By December its a tsunami. You can't escape it in any way, shape or form.

By January 3rd, I'm full of Christmas-is-finally-over joy.

I wasn’t alone. I was with my very elderly mother who has advanced Alzheimer’s. She no longer knows who I am. So, in a way, I was alone.

My grandpa was a smart man, he never celebrated Christmas.

To R60, Congrats on the islands for the NYE holidays!! I'm going at the end of January.

[quote] If that were true, we'd all be living in concentric circles forming around the Olduvai Gorge in Africa.

The reason why people in Nordic countries are so happy is because their relatives all live in waning distance from one another. They were also polled about this. They all feel that they have someone they can turn to. Family is very important for a functioning society. The Western world has way too many of these lonely old people they always bang on about. It should not be that way, at least not at the rate we currently see in the West.

Sending you a big hug OP ❤️ And sending love to the posters who have parents with dementia or lost their parents and miss them.

You aren’t truly alone because you have your dysfunctional datalounge family - we are here.

[R63], you are a good human for spending time with your ill mother.

I don't know if it makes you feel any better, but there are tons of people out there right now visiting family out of obligation, guilt and/or fear who would switch places with you in a heartbeat.

People that feel dread from the minute they accept the invitation (and the unspoken 'come or else' manipulation). People who have devoted a lot of advance mental work calculating how acceptably late they can arrive and how early they can leave. People make unneeded trips to the store and walking their dog for the 12th time in a day just to have an excuse to get away from their family. People spending too long in the bathroom with their phone to get away from their alcoholic uncle and screaming children. People right now trying to fall asleep on lumpy beds with 350 thread count polyblend threadbare sheets with pillows that are decades old and smell funny because their family member was 'offended' they even posited staying at a motel (while simultaneously being grateful they weren't the schmuck relatives that got stuck with the leaky air mattress in the den). Just trying to white knuckle it until they can they can get back into the car or the plane and go back home to some goddamned peace and quiet (all while exerting a tremendous amount of effort to not reveal how thrilled they are to be getting the hell out of there). Then, a couple of days later, they come down with some shit one of the petri dish neiblings brought with them from school.

Enjoy this time alone OP. Try not to feel lonely or weird. There are legions who envy your situation so much they can taste it.

I was alone. I was supposed to see some family but one of them is sick. I didn’t mind being alone. Christmas feels like something that happened in a previous lifetime that was mostly a big build up to a big let down anyway.

R69, good description of staying overnight at other people’s houses. The last time I went “home” for Thanksgiving, I got constipated and my low back went out for no apparent reason. I think I was over-stressed.

Good point, R71. Recovery from holiday visits takes at least a couple of weeks for me.

I’m sorry OP. I’m in my mid 30s - single but (despite our fights and disagreements at times) am grateful to still have both parents around. That said seeing both my parents go thru illness this holiday season got me down just thinking about “that day” in the future when I would lose one of them (/ eventually both), and how hard it would be during holidays, birthdays, etc. I feel for all you “orphans” and hope you find a way to quell those feelings of loneliness ❤️

Fuck yeah, and it was great. There wasn’t anything to do on Christmas day where I live, and the only person I spoke to all day was Siri.

When I stopped buying in to the whole "holiday season" and whatnot that pushed the idea of being alone on holidays was the worst thing since H, I found that it was a lot less stress, hassle, and work to do whatever I wanted without worrying about it.

We make ourselves miserable by believing that being alone or not being surrounded by friends or family on a specific day of the year is somehow any worse than any other day of the year.

I'm alone. I made phone calls to a few cousins, and friends, and the weather is really bad here so I just stayed indoors and ate and watched TV.

I think all of us really need to make an effort to stay in touch with people. Not just at Christmas but all year around. Force yourself.

I saw my siblings and some nieces and nephews for Christmas Eve. I would have loved to spend Christmas Day alone but we had my boyfriend’s 95 year old mother who is hard of hearing and has no short term memory spend the day. Then yesterday we picked her up and brought her to visit her niece. 2 hours each way in the car in traffic shouting so she could hear. But she is alone most of the time and needed the company and socialization so I sucked it up and sacrificed my holiday.

I was feeling bad that my parents who are in their 80s and getting frail were alone in Florida. My mom made a fabulous dinner and they got out to the beach for a walk before dinner. Sounds like a perfect day to me.

We also need to make new connections even though it’s difficult as you age and it’s uncomfortable. I’ve been trying in the past year and it’s truly been a pain in the ass (for a socially anxious introvert no less), but I’ve met some nice new friends. Would they invite me to Christmas dinner? Nope. But it’s brought me out of my shell and having more people to text with over the holidays has been a distraction.

Agree with R77, we need to stay in touch with old connections and try to make new ones. Other people are lonely too. And apparently (this came as a surprise to me), “secure” people tend to assume that other people like them. My default is to assume that no one wants to hear from me and no one likes me because they aren’t reaching out - but apparently that’s a very distorted way to view things and it further isolates you. Yes MARY I’ve been reading some self help shit 😂 sue me.

To R78, it sounds like your parents had a great Christmas, walking on the beach before dinner is perfect

Florida is only really good in the wintertime!!

R78, Did anyone think to give her a hearing aid for Christmas?

I was alone again, as usual. I like it better when I go to a good hotel for a couple nights but I had promised myself to keep costs down and stay home this year. Felt less angst than in earlier years. Which is not to say that I don’t feel like a reject as a human being, because I do.

Where in Florida, R78? Because it was freezing at my place in the Ocala Natl. Forest and at my dad's in St. Pete, and windy too. I sure as hell wouldn't have been walking on the beach.

Just curious.

OP, here.

Lots of great responses; thank you R67 and R69.

I totally understand and even appreciate the joy of being alone. I was that relative who got stuck on the air mattress one year. I have an older sibling who felt displaced by my arrival and after the death of a parent (father), he got stuck and he never ever ever got over it. Seriously, I grew up being loathed by an older sibling and I was apparently the only person who had a problem with it.

Plus, I think he's deeply closeted so...not a happy guy.

I often think of what Robin Williams said or what is attributed to him on social about the only thing worse than being alone is being with people who make you feel alone. I had a friend who would have invited me over for the holidays but he committed suicide five years ago; his family is devastated, of course, as am I.

I see his family occasionally and his widow asked what I was doing for the holidays but I wasn't going to say I had no plans. But had my pal lived, yeah, I would have taken the invite from him. It's all different now. I'm just close enough to his family that it kind of makes me say well, don't kill yourself. They'd think it was over him. (It wouldn't be though. Or maybe it would.)

I think my only happy Christmas memory is when I was 3 or 4 and I saw Santa Claus -- my dad, which was later confirmed to me -- dressed up as Santa Claus in our garage. I could see him through a glass door at our house and into a window in the garage.

How many kids have a dad who does stuff like that?

Why does God only take the good ones?

I dream of being around people where there's no drama; just acceptance...love, even.

I think I need to keep dreaming.

I don't ever see traveling across the country to be with disinterested relatives who are incapable of acting like a family would in my book. They're all too dysfunctional. We can have moments of what passes for getting along but then someone will flare up without warning -- like a bad STD -- and it all comes crashing down.

It's a hard pass on putting myself through that ever again.

I have my health, employment...some friends. I'm lucky.

But...the loneliness is rough. Really rough.

Wishing no one has to spend the next holidays alone.

You never know when life will get better.

Peace.

I’m in Fort Lauderdale right now and last night was a tad too chilly for Florida.

R83 - they were probably bundled in northern winter gear, as a walk on Christmas Day here in SW Florida wouldn't have been much fun. Not only was it cold, but yukky and overcast, not sunny at all.

My mom died 4 years ago, dad died 20 years ago. I'm an only child. Used to spend Christmas not only with my parents but with my many cousins, aunts and uncles, etc. Used to growing up with a big family around.

Anyway, about 10 or more years ago, some of the family decided that it woud be better (for them) to get together 15 or so days before Christmas. The rest of us really had no choice so we did that. But then at Christmas my mom and I would end up alone together on and around Christmas. (And I'd visit a friend or two, or vice-versa.) Then the relatives stopped getting together at all (Their own "closer" families had grown too big).

So they seemed to squeeze out some of us and don't apparently miss us. Kind of sad when I grew up with a big family and my parents fed them and did many other things for them, for years, and we had a lot of fun.

Once my mother and her three sisters died that ended the large family gatherings with the cousins. We weren't friends. They had families and friends of their own. I tried to stay in touch over the years, but now their kids have kids and I wouldn't recognize most of them if we passed in the street. I'd rather be alone. Keep my own schedule, plan my own menu, participate in my own activities. I'm peaceful. I'm not lonely or depressed. And you know, there's no substitute for being peaceful.

R88 agree.

I’m nostalgic for the large family gatherings my grandmother hosted when I was growing up, but the reality is that no one could recreate what she did. My single cousins (fuck the ones with their own families 😂) and I always message each other over the holidays and reminisce about how great she was. We are now spread out all over the country and aren’t close, but we all have that bond of how much we loved her.

People with children seem to get totally overwhelmed and busy over the holidays because of the kids. Which is completely understandable. But I reach out to single friends/family members and even childfree friends and it’s nice to connect with them.

Merry Christmas, OP. I just listened to a podcast about dealing with Loneliness.

You have to be active about finding relief from loneliness. And it's important to do so.

R83 & other Floridians asking, my parents are Yankee snowbirds living in Northeast Florida from late October until early May and then return to New England. Christmas Day was in the 40s. That’s perfect beach walking weather to our kind.

R81, my deaf MIL has been through multiple sets of hearing aids and constantly loses them, even with the find my hearing aids app. We gave up. Let this be a cautionary tale to fellow elder gays: at the first sign of hearing loss get and wear hearing aids. Once you are cognitively impaired it will never become something you get used to. If you’re feeling alienated now just wait until no one wants to try talking to you anymore because they have to scream so that you can hear them.

That was me, r78 at r91.

I'm a Massachusetts native, who lived most of my life in the northeast, I thought it was cold, R91.

Other than a couple of years when one of my grandmothers visited from MA, childhood holidays meant the four of us, my grandfather's sister and her unpleasant alcoholic husband. This year, my brother from the northwest was staying with our mother for the week. He's rather (undiagnosed) Aspie-ish, and can be manipulative. I bought a nice history book for him, receiving a packet of (not all that exotic) coffee (unwrapped). You get the idea.

It's worth remembering a lot of older guys here might have had a same-sex marriage or had kids, if same sex marriage or a gay male couple having kids was a more common thing back then. If it was more commonly accepted, by society, or within the family. I don't necessarily think a lot of younger guys understand this, totally. Not only was there the stigma of being in a same-sex relationship, there was just the society at the time that was all about straight relationships and marriage. A lot of gay guys weren't thinking of long term relationships or kids, (even without marriage). It just wasn't something you thought about a lot. Unless you were closeted and married a woman, and that wasn't all that uncommon, either.

I don't think my straight relatives, who have their kids and grandkids and in-laws with them for Christmas, are anything special because they're not alone. It wasn't that hard for them not to be alone. They don't even have to be well liked by their families. They just procreated. BIg deal. I don't feel less than them for not procreating, or for being alone. I don't envy them for anything.

R90 thank you for that. Read the transcript and enjoyed it.

your nieces and nephews marry. many have two places to go visit xmas. extrapolate that out another generation.

not unusual at all.

Since my older relatives all died off and mos tcousins have other things to do I chose to be alone. I have friend who invite me for dinner, and there are plenty of pre-Christmas parties, but at a certain point I jsut enjoy the fact that I am not obligated or pressured to do anything.