How to Successfully Navigate Holiday Loneliness
The key to a more connected holiday season isn’t to banish loneliness but to embrace it
My holiday loneliness typically hits on Dec. 19 — sometime in the afternoon. Not necessarily because it’s almost the darkest day of the year or because everyone gets suddenly stressed. No — it’s mostly because December 19 is my birthday. And birthdays, like Christmas or New Year’s Eve or the entire festive period, are treacherous events. Expectations and reality are rarely as far apart as on these days.
The result is often loneliness. In fact, a 2018 UK survey found that 17% of people feel lonelier during the festive period. Well, I’m one of these people.
A few years ago, around this time, I sat on a squeaky dorm bed, burying my face in my palms. My only company was the howling wind, whiplashing a few desolate snowflakes against the window. The sun had set, and the outside world was covered in black paint. I started humming a minor-key version of Happy Birthday, mixed with interludes of Silent Night. But my self-pitying hymns were soon interrupted by a voice inside my head.
“You have no friends,” it whispered. “Nobody likes you.”
When I visited my family for Christmas a few days later, something similar happened — just…
