By Meghan Fitzpatrick, Hospice & Palliative Care Representative
Old Colony Hospice & Palliative Care
The holidays are supposed to be a joyful time of year. The decorations go up, the invitations start arriving, and our calendars fill with parties, family gatherings, and traditions that remind us of what makes this season special. There is plenty to celebrate, but there can also be an awful lot of pressure to do so.
Recently, a friend told me she had been invited to Thanksgiving dinner. Her husband died last Christmas, and as the holidays approach again, she finds herself wanting to stay home. She doesn’t want to get dressed up, make conversation, or try to enjoy a celebration. She just wants to be home, and she is perfectly OK with that.
I found myself thinking about how often we feel the need to explain those kinds of decisions. We turn down an invitation and feel obligated to offer a reason. We admit that we are not feeling particularly festive and quickly follow it with something about how we know we should be. Somewhere along the way, we seem to have decided that if an opportunity for happiness presents itself, we are supposed to take it.
I am not sure if that is true.
The holidays can be a wonderful time, but they can also be exhausting, stressful, lonely, and complicated. For some, there is an empty chair at the dinner table or a tradition that no longer feels the same. For others, there are financial worries, strained family relationships, difficult memories, or the simple exhaustion that comes from trying to fit too much into too little time. Even when life is going well, the expectations surrounding the season can leave us feeling as though we are falling short if we are not enjoying every minute.
As the year comes to a close, we also tend to take stock of where we have been. We think about what we accomplished, what we are grateful for, and what we hoped would look different by now. We celebrate the good things, but we count our losses, too. Maybe we lost someone we love, watched a relationship change, struggled through a difficult season, or found ourselves ending the year somewhere we never expected to be.
We can be grateful for what we have and still be disappointed by what we don’t. We can recognize the good in our lives without pretending the hard parts didn’t happen. Those feelings are not mutually exclusive, and we do not need to resolve them before December arrives.
This is where I think it is important to distinguish between choosing joy and forcing it.
Choosing joy means making room for the things that genuinely bring us happiness. It might mean accepting an invitation because we are looking forward to seeing friends, putting up the decorations because we love how they make our home feel, or finding comfort in a familiar tradition. It can also mean recognizing that we need a quiet evening, declining a party, or allowing ourselves to experience a holiday a little differently this year.
Forcing joy means feeling that we have to participate, smile, and celebrate because that is what the season demands of us. It means ignoring our own needs because we worry about disappointing someone else or appearing ungrateful. We turn something that should be an opportunity for connection into another obligation on an already crowded list.
Sometimes, choosing joy means going to the party. Sometimes, it means not going at all.
My friend’s decision to stay home has stayed with me because she is not asking for permission to be sad. She knows what she needs, and she is allowing herself to honor it. There is something worth learning from that, whether we are grieving a tremendous loss or simply feeling overwhelmed by the demands of the season.
As we move through the holidays and toward another new year, perhaps we can give ourselves and one another a little more room to be human. We can extend invitations without expectations, accept that not everyone will be in a celebratory mood, and stop treating every declined invitation as a problem that needs solving.
There is plenty of joy to be found this time of year. There is also room for sadness, reflection, exhaustion, and quiet.
We don’t have to choose one feeling over another, and we certainly don’t have to prove we’re enjoying ourselves.
Sometimes, the best way to care for ourselves is to celebrate. Sometimes, it is to stay home.
Both are perfectly OK.
About the Author: Meghan Fitzpatrick is a business development representative at Old Colony Hospice & Palliative Care. She has a strong background in assisted living and dementia care. She is also a trained support group facilitator for the Alzheimer’s Association. Her compassion and knowledge make her a vital part of Old Colony Hospice’s outreach efforts. She is a trusted resource in the community, connecting with families, providers, and community partners throughout the region and can be reached at mfitzpatrick@oldcolonyhospice.com.
