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[REPLAY] How to Talk to Friends About Celebrating Holidays Together · Friendship IRL: Real Talk About Friendship, Community, and What It Actually Takes

• 0:02
  Alex Alexander: All right, gang.
• 0:02
  Alex Alexander: Here's to nights that turn into mornings and friends that turn into family. Cheers. Hello, hello, and welcome to the Friendship IRL podcast. I'm your host, Alex Alexander. Each week we talk about what is working(and what is not) in our friendships, community and connections. Have you ever wished you could sit down and have a conversation about what is really going on in your friendships? Well, you found your people. Join us as we dive into real life stories and explore new ways to approach these connections. Together, we're reimagining the rules of friendship I full-on car sobbed about the holidays this week, but not for the reason you might think I cried because I am so grateful and excited for the ways that we are celebrating our holidays this year, and that could not be further from the reasons I have car sobbed in years past. Like, what would it feel like for you if your holidays were something you were really excited about now, some of you listening like you're already gonna have that experience of being really excited, and I love that for you, but that is absolutely not everyone's experience. So if you are somebody who normally dreads the holidays, who feels like you just have to get through it, who can't wait for January 1, this episode is for you, we're going to talk about how to actually create some holidays that feel good. Now this whole conversation might be something that feels a little uncomfortable for you. It's pretty vulnerable to have conversations with friends about spending holidays together, right? This is outside the script of what we normally do.
• 2:19
  Alex Alexander: It's like holidays are meant to be for family, and I have fought that battle in my personal life for years. I am on the other side to tell you that if you want to create holiday magic, holiday experiences, holiday memories with your friends. If that's what feels good to you, you can do that, but the process of creating those plans with friends might make your stomach do some flips, because holidays are loaded. They are full of expectations and traditions and family dynamics. There's a whole lot of shoulds. And you know how I hate a should when it comes to the holidays, but I have spent the past five years figuring this out I was truly The Grinch.
• 3:08
  Alex Alexander: Michael actually used to call me The Grinch. I didn't even realize how much I despised the holidays in my low-to-mid-20s, and Michael comes from a family that loves the holidays, so I'm sure I stood out like a sore thumb, let's say that because of my holiday feelings, and I want to talk about this journey of going from someone who dreaded holidays to creating celebrations like this year that I am actually so excited about I am crying in my car in gratitude. So if you are someone who's been wondering how you might approach going about holidays in a different way, if you are feeling lonely this holiday season and you wish that your holiday celebrations looked different, or if you're just curious about what it might look like to create holiday traditions with your friends, this episode is for you. We're going to talk about how to start these conversations, what words to use. Like, yes, I'm actually going to give you real examples of things I have said to friends over the past few years to get to the place we are in and why it is okay for this transition to take time. Like, if I just summarize this episode, I want to tell you that sometimes the best holiday traditions start with one brave conversation. But before I tell you how I got here to this place of crying and gratitude, we need to talk about where many people are starting - when it comes to their holiday celebrations. I think for a lot of people, there is this unspoken assumption that everyone has somewhere to go, right? We all go home to our families, or we all do this thing. We have our partner. We like being with our little nuclear family. We whatever. We make this assumption that everyone else has what they want, and I think there are a good number of people who do have what they want, but there are also a lot of people who don't. And we are only starting to see a more mainstream conversation about how people don't enjoy their holidays, right? How much they dread this time of year. I also think that there is this assumption that there are, kind of, two options.
• 5:51
  Alex Alexander: This is all I see on the internet. At least the two options are family holiday, whether that is like your nuclear family or your extended family. That's option one.
• 6:04
  Alex Alexander: Option two is spend the holidays alone. And I see a good amount of content about this, like how to spend the holidays alone, how to romanticize spending the holidays alone, how to not hate the holiday if you end up spending it alone. I do think that there are some people that truly enjoy spending holidays alone, and if that is you, that is great. But I also watch a lot of these videos about people spending holidays alone, and think to myself, if there was a third option that was more societally normalized, would you take it? Because I don't know. I think, I think a good number of these people romanticizing this whole holidays alone, idea if they had a third option, they would at least try it. Maybe it's just me. I just think we have, like a third subset and these two mainstream categories, the push through the family holiday or the holidays alone, that we would have some people from both areas that kind of end up in this friend holiday section. Now if you're wondering why I'm going to try and without turning this into a therapy session, just give you a sense of my own personal background with holidays. So it is no secret that I grew up in a pretty dysfunctional household, lots of substance abuse. I am the much older eldest daughter.
• 7:46
  Alex Alexander: My siblings are eight and a half and 10 years younger than me.
• 7:51
  Alex Alexander: And my mom passed away when I was 13. These are all in previous podcast episodes. All this information, you can go back and listen, but I kind of fell into this role where I ended up being a kid who didn't get to experience much of the holiday magic. I ended up having to kind of be the magic maker for my family. That meant a lot of cooking our traditional recipes, of helping with stockings and presents and wrapping and like things when I should have been experiencing the magic. And as I got older, because I was so used to kind of prioritizing everyone else. In my low-20s, mid-20s, I just continued that pattern of kind of being the magic maker, without much consideration for how I wanted to spend the holidays, like what would feel good to me, I just repeated the same pattern and I did what I should do to play out this holiday magic for everybody, as I did all that deep therapy work, and, you know, hit 30, went to weekly therapy, did all this stuff, I started to realize, like, how much I dreaded the holidays to the point where, and one of the catalysts actually, for me going to therapy was this really intense panic attack I had on my way to my extended family holiday where I had to, like, lay the seat back. I was in the passenger seat. Michael was driving, and deep breathe my way through going to this holiday I would leave holidays and basically being shut down. It was a lot. So it made sense, if you take that story, that example, that the month six weeks, whatever leading up to it, I was The Grinch because I was dreading it. All I wanted was to get to December 26 every year. Now, if you are wondering how I went from basically for being The Grinch every year to this year, crying happy tears in the span of about five years, it has been quite a journey, and I want to tell you how I did that, because maybe some parts of this will align with you, and you can give them a try in your own life. The first thing I did was get really honest with myself.
• 10:16
  Alex Alexander: Right after that panic attack, I had to have this moment of being like, wow, I dread this every year, to the point where I'm having panic attacks, I'm shutting down, I'm doing all these things. This isn't working for me. This isn't working for me, right? We have to get honest about the fact that I want something new. I want something new, and I had to do my own soul searching on what I even thought would feel good. I considered all the more like spend holidays alone, alternatives and to me, that wasn't what I wanted. If that is what you want, I love that for you, but it's not what I wanted. What I wanted was this feeling of togetherness, this feeling of connection with the people that I love. I wanted to split the burden of that magic making like, I am happy to do some of that, but it can't all fall on me. I honestly just wanted to be around people like it doesn't need to be some big production. It doesn't need to look like it's in the movies. We don't need endless perfectly wrapped presents and huge caroling parties and perfect food. Like, I don't really care what it looks like. I care what it feels like. And I just want to go and spend the day in a way where I'm surrounded by other people I love. We are having fun, and everyone walks away just being like, wow, it was so amazing to be together. That's kind of the vision I had. So once I had that vision in my head, that, of course, led to like, Okay, well, who are these people that I feel super comfortable around, that feel safe to me? And of course, because it's me, my friends, came to mind. Now I did have a unique kind of unexpected catalyst in here that not everyone is going to have. And that is that as I started kind of doing this therapy and the soul searching and this thought process, we were in 2020 in shutdown and Christmas. 2020 was the first Christmas I basically ever had that felt good to me.
• 12:29
  Alex Alexander: We spent Christmas 2020 with some of our closest friends.
• 12:33
  Alex Alexander: They were people we were kind of, you know, potted up with seeing regularly. So it was an easy like, Hey, are we just gonna spend the holidays together. It was just us and one other couple. I don't even think we did any gift exchange. We basically, gosh, what did we do Christmas Eve? I think we made my friends, like, traditional family recipe. They have, like, a very set, you know, they do a certain meal on Christmas Eve.
• 13:03
  Alex Alexander: So it was fun to learn about that meal and make that meal and do all that Christmas Day we constructed, we both love to cook, so we constructed this kind of whole ridiculous menu that we all still talk about today, to the point where Michael made this cocktail menu, and each part of the day had different cocktail options with like fresh squeezed juices.
• 13:29
  Alex Alexander: Again, it was 2020, we were all on lockdown with plenty of time, but we just kind of created this whole situation that was if we could do anything we wanted to do, what would we do together?
• 13:42
  Alex Alexander: The four of us, we watched movies, gosh, we made cinnamon rolls that I actually was just talking to this friend yesterday, and she mentioned that those cinnamon rolls are now like their tradition with their kids. And you know, when we go down to see them for some future holiday, those cinnamon rolls will be there, like, I get that. That was kind of an un it was a very unique catalyst. But it really made me realize, like, wow, I can have it's not the holiday. It is the way I am spending the holiday, and that, I think kick started even more this drive to have conversations, even if they felt uncomfortable, so that I could have holidays that felt good.
• 14:28
  Alex Alexander: Now let's note, let's call out this very important detail, that it's almost five years at this point that I have been slowly transitioning holidays, that I've been trying to find holidays that feel good, so it's not going to happen overnight, and I think we need to normalize that timeline. Yeah. Okay, so you might be sitting here thinking, This sounds great, but how do I actually have these conversations like, What did you say to people to get them to a place where you could celebrate holidays together? And I'm gonna share some of the exact phrases I used, because I know how scary and vulnerable those first conversations can feel right.
• 15:16
  Alex Alexander: When you start talking to people about spending holidays together, there is this kind of underlying. Is the word shame might be. There's this underlying feeling, at least for me, that something is wrong with you, like, why don't you have what in your brain you feel like everyone else has? Why can't what you have feel good? What's wrong with you like you have to kind of have this admission. And again, that was my experience.
• 15:46
  Alex Alexander: That may not be your experience.
• 15:46
  Alex Alexander: Maybe you are just like, ready to dive in. And I love that for you. But I went about it kind of really starting small. So back in right after that great Christmas in 2020 that opened my eyes to the fact that I could really enjoy the holidays. I spent 2021 opening up in small ways. It was just simple phrases like, I would literally tell my friends, like, Oh, something I really want to work on the next few years is finding holidays that feel good to me. That's it.
• 16:21
  Alex Alexander: I'm not even really expanding on that. I'm just throwing that out there, maybe in some context with some friends, or if the situation is right, I would expand on that. I would open up about how holidays have never felt quite right. I generally dread holidays. I have spent all this time thinking about how I want to spend holidays, and I just want them to feel good, and I want to be surrounded by people I love, and a lot of those people are friends, right?
• 16:51
  Alex Alexander: And I wouldn't even direct it at that friend. I'm just being honest and authentic and vulnerable. I don't even need to give my whole backstory on my Christmas I'm just putting it out there. And that's really how this started, was kind of planting the seeds, and then maybe I would expand more on those seeds, right? Like, I just want to have chill, comfortable holidays, or something I've said before is like, Oh, I just love to host a open house on maybe Christmas Eve someday where everyone is welcome and we have kind of like a chill movie day.
• 17:30
  Alex Alexander: Maybe there's some holiday cookie decorating for the kids and the adults mixed in. Like, Wouldn't that just be so fun on Christmas? Maybe I would plant a more direct seed. This is kind of the next level, and I would just be like, what if we spent Christmas together someday?
• 17:52
  Alex Alexander: Like, I think it would be so fun to spend Christmas with you and your family. Like, what would we even do? And that is no pressure, right? I am not asking them. And part of this, I wasn't trying to force these friends into it. I really was just trying to envision the possibility for myself, right?
• 18:13
  Alex Alexander: Because sometimes the friends, when I would say, what if we spent Christmas together? One day, they would have ideas that I hadn't even thought of, like, oh my gosh, that would be so fun if we did that, and would open up new possibilities for me to daydream about. But also, it's now expanding for them, like what they thought was limited, whether they ever make that shift or not, they realize that there are other options, right?
• 18:43
  Alex Alexander: It's not just option one, option two, like there is option three, but also 45678, so spend a lot of time just kind of planting these seeds and talking about this idea of what if we did so in the next step, the thing that I've really done, I think the past two years is I've been a little more direct with friends that we are closest with about how I actually would love to make this a reality. And I want to call out the vulnerability of that right, because it may never happen. And I had to really sit with myself and think about the fact that if it never happens, if we never do a holiday together, there is vulnerability in them, knowing I would love to right that that is a connection point, that that is success, that them, knowing that, like I trust and love and feel comfortable Enough around them to spend the holidays with them, sharing that with them is a positive in our friendship.
• 19:43
  Alex Alexander: That is the success. The marker of success is not whether they ever say yes or no, because it probably doesn't have anything to do with me, and I'm going to talk a little bit more about that next, but I just want to throw that out there. So, would ask people like, what are you doing for the holidays? And they would detail out, maybe, you know, we're seeing family on the 21st and on the 23rd and we have brunch with this side of the family on the 24th and we're just gonna stay at home in our pajamas on the 25th right? And as I did that, you kind of start to see these places where, like, maybe there is the possibility, right? Again, I had assumed everyone's booked. I don't know about you, but my Christmases as a kid were my mom's side of the family on Christmas Eve and my dad's side of the family on Christmas Day, and there was no possibility for anything else.
• 20:41
  Alex Alexander: So when you're asking people just like, What are you doing for the holidays, you might find that somebody has plans on one day, but not the other. Somebody is now celebrating Christmas with their extended family two weeks before. Like, you don't know, unless you ask, that's all I'm saying. Now the more kind of, like direct thing I did this year, I can think of one conversation in particular, is some friends of ours and their kiddos. They don't live very far from us. These were people that I kind of would love to spend the holidays with, but assumed, again, they're juggling, like two sides of the family that live nearby, that they would not have any space. But I think in like, October, we were hanging out, and I just said, Hey, I'm not sure what you all are doing for Christmas. Like, please don't feel like you need to answer this, but we would love to spend some part of the holidays with you. I think that would be so much fun. I think it'd be cool to talk about what we would do together. I just think we'd all enjoy it. I know that Michael and I would. Now there is no pressure to answer.
• 21:54
  Alex Alexander: In fact, I don't want an answer, even if you answer me right now, I'm not going to consider that an answer. I know that you need to talk to your partner. I know that you need to figure out your plans, but if you're around, we currently don't have any plans, and we would love to spend it with you. I did that in October.
• 22:15
  Alex Alexander: I really did that, and it just sat and I really didn't expect an answer, right? This could have come back three years from now, of them saying, hey, remember we mentioned maybe doing something together on the holidays? Do you want to? It worked way faster for me, probably because I have been honest, because I have planted seeds, things like that. This friend—gosh, what was that? The second week of December, we were hanging out and out of nowhere.
• 22:43
  Alex Alexander: She was like, hey, remember when you mentioned spending Christmas together? What are you doing? I told her we had family stuff the weekend before, but we were pretty open the 24th and 25th and she was like, you know, I talked to my partner and also our friend, I'm just not going to say his name. And she was like, Do you want to do Christmas day together? And when I tell you, I really had let go, I just if it ever came back around. That's great, but I had put it out there. That was my success. This can work. You never know. My assumption was absolutely that they were not available, and now I am crying in my car because I am so excited to be spending the holidays with it. Now that is one example. We have a mix of holiday plans with friends this year, like when we go to see family the weekend before, we are going to try and see two friends, because we have to go out of town to see them. So we're doing a, I don't know what, with one friend. Kind of, like, probably spending the day together, and then some other friends were going over for dinner, then Christmas Eve, some friends we've spent with in the past, I think we're hoping to do something with them. We probably should firm that up. There's some other friends are kind of floating out there that I'm like, I don't know. Are we gonna, like, meet up with them?
• 24:11
  Alex Alexander: Maybe two?... TBD and then now we have these Christmas Day plans. So we do have some family plans on the front end. That's just how it worked out with extended family. But then we really have this mix of friends.
• 24:27
  Alex Alexander: So I am crying about that one set of friends, because honestly, I think it feels like a reminder that whatever my assumptions were weren't real, and I'm just grateful that I took a risk and put it out there, and that's what I'm crying about. But it's really the whole thing that's just the one that pushed me over the edge, the wildest thing to me about all of this is that when I started having these conversations with friends, I had no idea where they would lead. I had a hope, but I had no guarantee. I didn't know so. So if that is you, if you want your holiday plans to be different, I want you to sit down to consider what would feel good to you. I want you to start planting those seeds and having those conversations and keeping things open-ended. I want you to be open to the possibility that things could look completely different a few years from now, like where I am now is pretty inconceivable to 2018 Alex, this year, not only are we spending this mix with friends, but there are actually other sets of friends that we kind of have an open invite, like we had a different Zoom call, then a FaceTime call with some friends yesterday, and they were like, what year are you coming to fly to us to spend Christmas? We have a few of those. We have so many possibilities and places we can go that feel good, and I would be absolutely through the moon, thrilled to spend my holidays with them all, because I put it out there.
• 27:10
  Alex Alexander: Now, the other huge piece I want to close on the thing about these holidays, and I kind of previewed this in the beginning, right? The thing about these holidays is there's so many expectations, so many should, so many built-up rituals and traditions and like, it's just a lot. And in order for two sets of friends, whether it's just two friends or two, like friends and their families, to start to connect on holidays, to spend holidays together, it requires not only me, but my friend. I'm going to use this friend we're spending Christmas Day with to envision something different, right to sit with those expectations, with whatever they have on their plate, and things like that, how they've envisioned spending their holidays and to just consider the possibility of something different. So I think part of the reason I cried in the car is because not only am I grateful for the actual day we are spending with our friends and that time, but I am also grateful to my friends for their time and energy they put in to considering and envisioning Something different. Does that make sense? Two of us have to envision something different. We have to step outside of the expectations and the assumptions. We have to consider what would feel good. We have to be honest. I mean, these friends that we're spending Christmas Day with, right the vulnerability, once we open that door, it keeps going. Because not only was I vulnerable about being honest, of like, Hey, I would love to spend holidays with you. I think that would be beautiful and feel good. But then now that we've opened that door, like my friend came back and was like, Hey, we can do the holidays together, but as a mom with two kids, I want that day that we spend together to be pajamas, and I really don't want to cook anything, because I want to spend the day being present with my kids, right? Like she's basically opting out of this bigger hosting piece. And it has created this door for both of us to just really state what our vision is and figure out how we can make that happen. And I am so grateful that she and her husband, some good friends of us, were willing to do that right, because that is how it's gonna feel good is when both sets of people spend the time reflecting and creating this vision and then communicating it to each other, and the fact that our friends did that, that's what had me crying in the car.
• 30:06
  Alex Alexander: So if you are sitting here listening to this podcast, feeling like the holidays that are coming up aren't quite what you want them to be, I want you to know that you're not alone. I hope you already know that, but you are definitely not alone.
• 30:24
  Alex Alexander: And more importantly, I want you to know that it's okay to start dreaming up something different, and that once you have that dream, sometimes all it takes is a few brave conversations to start creating the holiday experience that you've already wanted. I would love to hear about any holiday celebrations you create with your friends, where this goes for you, what your vision is. And more than anything, I just hope that whatever you're doing feels good to you, because we all deserve that. With that, I'll see you next week.
• 31:08
  Podcast Intro/Outro: Thank you for listening to this episode of Friendship IRL. I am so honored to have these conversations with you. But don't let the chat die here. Send me a voice message. I created a special website just to chat with you. You can find it at alexalex.chat. You can also find me on Instagram. My handle, @itsalexalexander. Or go ahead and leave a review wherever you prefer to listen to podcasts. Now if you want to take this conversation a step further, send this episode to a friend. Tell them you found it interesting. And use what we just talked about as a conversation starter the next time you and your friend hang out. No need for a teary goodbye. I'll be back with a new episode next week.