Spending the holidays alone: how to get through them without pretending

“And where will you be for Christmas?” a colleague asks on the last working day, closing her laptop. “At home, keeping it quiet this year,” you say, and smile as though it were a decision. It is true that you will be at home. It is not true that quiet is what you are expecting. You are expecting three days in which the phone is silent, the shops are shut and the windows in the block opposite are lit.

This post is for those who will spend a holiday, whether Christmas, New Year or their own birthday, alone, and who mind. I am not going to persuade you that solitude is a gift, nor instruct you to get out among people. I would like to explain why these particular days are harder than ordinary ones, what research says about them, and how to get through them without having to act a part for yourself or for anyone else.

Alone, lonely or cut off: first work out which one applies

Being alone for a holiday does not yet mean being lonely. Solitude is a state: there is nobody else in the flat. Loneliness is the feeling that you are missing the closeness you would like, and it can find you at a full table too. Social isolation means that contact is scarce in general, not just this week.

For the holidays the difference is very practical. If you are alone because you chose it this year, or because circumstances fell that way, what you mainly need is a good plan for the day. If you are lonely, you need at least one contact in which you can be honest. And if the holidays are simply the loudest reminder that it has been like this all year, that is a subject for January, not for Christmas Eve. I write about it, including what long-term loneliness means for the body, in the post Loneliness and health: what the research shows and what it doesn’t.

You are not the only one with this feeling. In a survey on loneliness carried out in 2022 across all European Union countries by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, about 13 per cent of respondents said they had felt lonely most or all of the time over the previous four weeks. That is roughly one adult in eight, far more people than you would guess from the festive photographs.

Why a holiday alone is harder than an ordinary Sunday

On an ordinary Tuesday you can be alone all evening and not even notice. On Christmas Eve the same sofa becomes evidence. Three things are happening at once.

Routine disappears. Work, the gym, the shop, a passing chat at the coffee machine: during the week all of this quietly holds the day up. In Slovenia, 25 and 26 December and 1 and 2 January are public holidays, the shops are closed and the streets are empty. Whatever normally gave your day its shape and its small contacts simply does not exist for a few days.

Comparison grows. All December you watch adverts, films and posts showing the same image: a big table, lots of people, everyone fond of each other. Next to that image you are no longer measuring your own day, but your distance from it.

Expectation presses down. The holidays are one of the few parts of the year that come with a clear rule about how you ought to feel. Sadness on a day that is officially happy therefore hurts not only as sadness but also as failure. That second layer is shame, and it is the reason holiday loneliness is so hard to admit.

It helps to know that most of the weight does not come from the bare fact of being alone, but from these three extras. You may have no say over the fact this week. Over the extras you have some.

Is everyone else really celebrating together?

In 2017 the psychologists Sebastian Deri, Shai Davidai and Thomas Gilovich showed in a series of studies that we systematically believe other people have richer social lives than we do: more friends, more invitations, more parties. The reason lies in whom we compare ourselves with. When we think of “other people”, it is not the quiet neighbour who comes to mind but the most sociable people we know, simply because they are the most visible.

Over the holidays this error gets bigger. Nobody posts a photograph of the evening they ate packet soup in their pyjamas at eight o’clock. You do not see the people working in a hospital, driving a bus or on call. You do not see the separated parents who have the children for Christmas every other year, nor those sitting at a full table counting the hours until they can leave. The windows in the block opposite are lit, but a lit window does not show you how the person behind it is doing.

A full table is no guarantee either. Family holidays can be tense for reasons that have nothing to do with love; I describe one such case in the post Family holidays when there is an inheritance on the table. I am not saying this to suggest that things are easier for you than they feel. Only that the picture you are comparing yourself with is not accurate.

What research says about holidays and distress

There is a widespread belief that suicides peak around Christmas. The data do not support it. An Austrian study by Martin Plöderl and colleagues, covering several years of data, showed that the number of suicides falls before and at Christmas and rises at New Year. A 2011 review by Randy and Lori Sansone paints a similar picture: mood is worse for many people during the festive period, yet visits to psychiatric emergency services and self-harm go down, with a rebound after the holidays.

I would draw two things from this. First: if you are finding these days hard, that is not in itself a sign that you are in particular danger; lower mood around the holidays is common and mostly passes. Second: the time just after the holiday is more delicate than the holiday itself, when the decorations come down, the anticipation lets go and January arrives. Those days are worth thinking about in advance.

If, however, thoughts appear that you cannot go on or that it would be better if you were not here, do not wait for the holidays to pass. In Slovenia the Samarijan confidential helpline on 116 123 is available 24 hours a day. The Klic v duševni stiski crisis line on 01 520 99 00 operates every day between 7 pm and 7 am, and in an emergency call 112.

Christmas, New Year, a birthday: three different days

We tend to lump the holidays together, but each presses in a different place.

Christmas is the holiday of family and home. Anyone spending it alone meets the question of where they belong: with a family that does not exist, that is far away, or with whom there is no longer contact. If the chair is empty because someone has died, that is grief and not loneliness, although from the inside they feel alike. I write about this in the posts Anniversaries, holidays and the empty chair: getting through the dates and The first holidays without him.

New Year is the holiday of friends and of taking stock. It does not ask “whose are you” but “who invited you” and “what did you achieve this year”. Midnight is a single moment governed by an unwritten rule that it must be shared with someone. That is why many people for whom Christmas passed calmly find the last evening of the year harder to bear. Alcohol is an added difficulty: if you do not drink or do not want to, the post Sober in a drinking culture: getting through the holidays and parties may help.

A birthday is the only one of the three that is yours alone. No shops are shut and there are no lights; the world carries on as if nothing were happening. So something else counts: who remembers. Every message that does not arrive reads as an answer to the question of whom you matter to. With birthdays, what often helps most is telling people you have one. For many that is harder than it sounds, because it feels like asking.

Once you know which day hits you and why, you can plan more precisely. For one person it is enough to take care of Christmas Eve, and New Year’s Eve makes no difference. For another it is exactly the reverse.

Without pretending: what to say when they ask

Pretending comes in two forms. The first faces outwards: “I’ve got loads of plans.” The second faces inwards: “I don’t care anyway, the holidays are just consumerist nonsense.” Both are understandable and both cost something. The first cuts you off from the one thing that might help, namely that somebody knows. The second requires you to spend the whole week not feeling what you feel.

Not pretending does not mean you have to explain your life to everyone. It means a sentence that is true and as long as you want it to be. Something like this (the conversation is a composite, not a real person):

“So where will you be for the holidays?”
“I’m on my own this year. Not exactly by choice, but I’ll manage.”
“Oh. I didn’t know. If you like, come for lunch on the twenty-sixth, there are too many of us anyway.”
“Thank you. I don’t know yet whether I’ll be up to company. Can I let you know the day before?”
“Of course. And if you don’t come, I’m walking up Rožnik on the twenty-seventh, we could go together.”

It does not always end like that. Sometimes all you get is an awkward silence or “oh, enjoy the peace”. But a true sentence does something even when no invitation follows: you stop spending energy on a story. You may also notice that “I don’t know yet” is a valid answer. An invitation need not be accepted at once, nor turned down out of pride.

The same applies inwards. You can be sad to be alone and, at the same time, relieved that you do not have to visit the aunt who asks the same question every year. A kind attitude towards what you feel, without correcting it, is described in the entry on self-compassion.

What helps: a shape for the day and small contacts

The day needs a shape. Because routine has gone, it has to be made by hand for this one day. Not a full timetable; three anchors are enough: something for the body in the morning, something that takes you out of the flat, and something to look forward to in the evening. A holiday without a plan ends, sooner or later, with your phone and other people’s photographs.

Small contacts count for more than you think. In 2014 Gillian Sandstrom and Elizabeth Dunn showed that on days when people had more conversations with casual acquaintances, such as a neighbour, a shop assistant or the person with the dog they pass every day, they reported greater happiness and a stronger sense of belonging. On a holiday such contacts are scarce, so they are worth seeking out: a walk to wherever people are, midnight mass or a concert even if you are not religious, coffee in the only place that is open, a greeting to the neighbour on the stairs.

Chosen solitude is different from imposed solitude. In 2018 Thuy-vy Nguyen, Richard Ryan and Edward Deci found that time spent alone calms strong emotions, pleasant and unpleasant alike, and that the experience is better when the solitude is chosen. You may not have chosen the whole holiday. But you can choose its parts: what you eat, what you watch, when you go out. Every part of the day that is your decision feels a little less like something that happened to you.

Do something that sets the day apart. It need not be a ritual you know from home. It can be a dish nobody cooks for one, but you will. A candle for someone. A hill you climb every year on this day. Holidays are hard partly because, without a shape, they are just an empty day with a big name.

Limit the comparing. If you know other people’s posts pull you down, make an agreement with yourself for a day or two: the phone is for calls and messages, not for scrolling.

An exercise: a plan for one holiday

Do it a day or two beforehand, on a sheet of paper. It takes fifteen minutes.

1. Choose the day that worries you most. A single one, for example Christmas Eve, New Year’s Eve or your birthday, not the whole period.
2. Write down three anchors with a specific time. One for the body (a walk, a run, some stretching), one outside the flat (a walk through town, a visit to a grave, a concert) and one for the evening that you look forward to (a meal, a film, a book, a bath).
3. Decide on one contact and arrange it in advance. A call at a set time, a walk, a message to someone who is probably alone too. An arranged contact is worth more than the hope that someone will get in touch.
4. Write a sentence for the hardest hour. Most people know when it comes: at dinner, at midnight, or in the morning at the first glance at the phone. Write down what you will do then: “At midnight I’ll be on the balcony with a cup of tea, then I’ll ring my sister.”
5. Plan the day after as well. One arranged thing for 27 December, 2 January or the day after your birthday, so the holiday does not end in a void.

The plan is not an obligation. If halfway through the day you find you would rather stay under the blanket, that is a decision too. The difference is that you have a choice.

When this advice does not apply

Everything above assumes that a holiday alone is something to be softened. That is not always so.

For some, a holiday alone is a relief. Someone who grew up in a house where Christmas was a day of rows or drunkenness may experience a quiet evening as the first peaceful holiday of their life. If you are one of them, you do not need a plan against loneliness and you owe nobody an explanation. Sometimes being alone is the price of a boundary you set for good reason.

Grief is not loneliness. If you are alone because someone died this year or because a relationship ended, anchors and small contacts help you get through the day, but they do not fill the gap, nor can they. What the silence after a break-up is like is described in the post Loneliness after divorce: the silence you did not expect.

Good advice does not reach depression. If for weeks you have not been sleeping, eating or finding the will to do anything, “go for a walk” is too much and too little at once. Then the first step is your GP, not a better holiday plan.

A holiday does not have to be “made the most of”. The internet is full of suggestions for turning a holiday alone into an opportunity for growth, pampering and new traditions. If that suits you, good. If not, getting through the day without added harm is a perfectly sufficient aim. A day you got through is a good enough day.

And not everything is up to you. A person who is alone because they work shifts, because their family is in another country or because they cannot afford the journey does not have a problem with their attitude to solitude. They have circumstances.

When the holidays are over

On the third of January the shops open, work returns and with it the shape of the day. For many that brings relief. For some, as the research mentioned above suggests, that is exactly when mood dips. If it happens to you, it is no wonder: the tension that was holding you up has let go.

January is also a good time for a question there is no point in trying to solve on Christmas Eve: was the holiday an exception or a mirror? If it was just an awkward combination of circumstances, leave it behind. If it showed you that there are fewer people in your life than you would like, that is information, not a verdict. It is something that can be worked on slowly, over the year, not in the last week of December.

It is also something you can talk through in therapy. As a therapist in training under supervision in relational family therapy, with loneliness I do not look first for where you might find more people, but at what happens in you when someone comes nearer: when you pull back, what you expect, and where you know that expectation from. Sessions are held in person in Ljubljana, and I also work with English-speaking clients.

What to remember

• Being alone, being lonely and being socially isolated are three different things; each calls for something different over the holidays.
• A holiday alone is harder than an ordinary day because routine disappears, comparison grows and the expectation of how you ought to feel presses down.
• The impression that everyone else is celebrating together is distorted; loneliness is more common than the photographs suggest.
• Three anchors in the day, one contact arranged in advance and a true sentence in place of a story all help.
• The time after the holidays is delicate too; if you have thoughts that you cannot go on, in Slovenia call 116 123 or 112.