My first Thanksgiving at my beau\u2019s family table, I hid in the bathroom a half-dozen times to check my watch. Can we leave yet?<\/p>\n
Despite the lifelong ache to have my own regular family, with generations of happy family gatherings, and despite the steady, routine absence of all that \u2014 thank you addiction, suicides, and estrangements \u2014 I resolve to not let my dread of others\u2019 family holiday gatherings show.<\/p>\n
\u201cGo where the happiness is,\u201d the therapists chant. And I have. For decades. But the reality is that there is a muscle necessary to steel one\u2019s heart so we can keep walking in and smiling at other people\u2019s families. That muscle keeps getting trained. Weight trained.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve hosted many non-familial Thanksgivings, full of the lonely, the broken, the single, and the alone, this year, for whatever reason.<\/p>\n
I roast the turkey, decorate, set the table, and light the candles. It is lovely. Often, we stack dishes and move to the piano. I throw great parties, so we haul out all the Billy Joel, Olivia Newton-John, and Beatles lyrics, and we have a sing-along.<\/p>\n
We have dessert and dessert wines, and maybe coffee with liqueurs. We banter about the best pecan and pumpkin pies we\u2019ve ever tasted and swear to make the French bourbon cheesecake someone had in Italy for next year\u2019s gathering.<\/p>\n
It is joyful in its way \u2014 boisterous, tipsy, unorthodox.<\/p>\n
But it is not family. We are not related. We do not share private medical information because high cholesterol and a weak heart run rampant on your father\u2019s side. We did not, together, hold our mother\u2019s hand when she passed. We did not attend each other\u2019s children\u2019s births, as blood-related people often do.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a meal, held on a holiday.<\/p>\n
At some point, you meet someone somewhere along the way and now you\u2019re sharing their family\u2019s holiday celebration, one populated by someone else\u2019s blood.<\/p>\n
This is the part where you\u2019re supposed to feel grateful. And there are moments when you do. But if your family members are addicted, or died young, or suffer mental illness or are a combination of any of that, you are reminded anew that these dynamics are often multi-generational. Addicts take hostages. They do not have relationships. So if your family is in that pool, holidays can only be peaceful with other people.<\/p>\n
And sometimes they are not your relatives.<\/p>\n
What no one wants at any family holiday table is bitterness, mental illness, or unresolved substance messiness. No one wants the sad facts of real life to puncture the bubble of happy, shared, familial history revisited at the holiday feast. If blood is that, then attending someone else\u2019s Thanksgiving, or just chucking it and going to a movie, is the default.<\/p>\n
I am hardly alone. A 2024 Boise State report says that 61% of Americans experience sadness or loneliness during the holiday season and 37% would prefer to skip the holidays entirely.<\/p>\n
A November 2024 Harris Poll found that 50% of U.S. adults are currently estranged from at least one close relation, and, among those, 35% are estranged from an immediate family member such as a parent or sibling.<\/p>\n