How I Left Behind Expectations to Create the Perfect Holiday
It’s 6:00 p.m. the night before Thanksgiving when it happens: I put on my pajamas. I sigh happily because I know I’m not taking those pajamas off until Friday. I’m about to have my perfect holiday — doing nothing.
“What are you doing for Thanksgiving?” people have asked me all week.
When I say, “nothing” I get the sympathetic head tilt.
I can see it in their eyes. “That poor thing has nothing to do on the holiday.”
When I add, “It’s going to be great” or “I love having no plans” people look confused. Sometimes they think I really want to have plans and give me a pity invite to their event. Sometimes I can see them wondering what is wrong with me.
Here’s the thing: for some of us, the best holiday is no holiday.
Holidays were a source of drama and misery for me as a kid. As an adult, I spent many years yielding to boyfriends or determined friends who insisted that I had to spend holidays with their families. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciated the invitations and sometimes I even had fun, but it wasn’t what I really wanted to be doing.
Some years I succumbed to holiday pressure and had people over to my house to create my own kind of holiday…
