It’s a simple statement, but something tells me a lot of folks need to hear it right now: Holidays are not one size fits all.

No two families celebrate holidays the same way and lots of people don’t celebrate holidays at all. On top of that, your celebratory routines can fluctuate from year to year. This year is the perfect case in point. Travel restrictions and public health guidelines may necessitate a change from your annual traditions and patterns.

A Year of Disrupting What’s “Normal”

2020 has been about flexibility, change, uncertainty, and sacrifice. It’s forced everyone to change their daily routines, ones that we often followed unthinkingly. So, while you’re reminiscing about or longing for what used to be normal for you, it can be a good time to recognize that your normal is just that: your normal. Not anyone else’s.

Normal Isn’t Universal

Normal, like holiday traditions, isn’t one size fits all. I’ve described before what my family Christmases were like and how hard, how lonely, and how alienating it is to have “perfect” Christmases and families represented in movies and on TV when your own life feels so far removed from that.

Create Traditions That Represent Your Normal, Not Anyone Else’s

For anyone who feels like I used to, here is your loving reminder that your normal is your own, that you are allowed — nay, encouraged — to make your holiday traditions whatever you want them to be based on your own interests and what’s special to you (whether it’s watching “Ash vs. Evil Dead” for the umpteenth time or bingeing on schlocky Hallmark Channel holiday movies), and that you can say “Fuck it” and “No thank you!” whenever you feel any pressure to live up to someone else’s idea of the perfect Christmas.

Now go do your own thing, celebrate or not, and stay healthy and free.

Hope and joy,

Rachel