Celebrating When You Are Alone

© Superbass / CC-BY-SA-4.0 (via Wikimedia Commons).

( © Superbass / CC-BY-SA-4.0 (via Wikimedia Commons).

A new reader recently found this blog by searching for how to celebrate when you are alone. I’m going to assume that he or she was talking about the holidays. If this isn’t true and you’re the person who searched for it, let me know what you were really thinking.

One of the things I had to adjust to when I moved to Toronto was celebrating most holidays with only Drew’s company, and he’s not the kind of person who usually gets excited about the holidays.

Does this count as celebrating alone? Given that I’d spent most of my childhood being surrounded by a house full of relatives  for Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Easter, I think it does.

It took some time to grow accustomed to the quiet. I was used to hearing half a dozen conversations going on at once, to tables groaning with food, and to so many people around me that I could barely hear myself think.

This wasn’t a bad experience, by the way. I loved and love spending time with our extended family.

It’s just that Toronto couldn’t offer me that.

The trick is to find out what celebrating alone – or nearly alone – can offer you.

Once year we (but mostly I) feasted on carbohydrates. Rather than making an entire Thanksgiving dinner for just the two of us, I narrowed it down to the foods I loved the most: pie, rolls, and stuffing. It was delicious, although I didn’t eat any of them again for a long time.

Another year I made sugar cookies. The only tin cutouts I could find anywhere in my neighbourhood were at a dollar store. All of them were in the shapes of single-digit numbers. So that year I ate a lot of ones, twos, and threes. Ha!

Other years I haven’t celebrated anything at all. There’s something to be said for stripping away all of the extra work that comes with planning a big meal and just enjoying a nice, quiet day. Don’t underestimate how relaxing it is to watch a movie or order in a pizza. As time passes, I fall back onto this option more and more during the holidays when I know I won’t be going to the U.S.

Long walks are also nice. The streets are usually quieter than normal during big holidays, especially if you avoid driving on the highways or taking mass transit. It’s like the entire city is sleeping. This isn’t literally true, of course, but it’s a funny thought to ponder.

As an aside: I added the picture above to this post due to my love of rabbits. Unless one of my readers is planning to invite me over to visit their bunnies some holiday, there is only a tenuous connection between these topics. 😉

How have your celebrations changed over the years? How do you celebrate alone?

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0 Responses to Celebrating When You Are Alone

  1. Fred Schoch

    Your bunny picture make me smile! I know just a random comment. I think its interesting how the holiday experience changes over time. I remember a rather drastic change when i became 18 or somewhere there. Christmas no longer held the same excitement as when I was a child. It was sort of a bitter sweet awareness adapting to changes. I began to experience a more intense rejection to the commercialism of the holiday.

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