How do you keep from feeling alone during the holidays?

Are you really alone? I mean, do you live alone and you don’t have family or friends near you?

I do live alone and family is far away but I’m fine… I just feel like so many people feel alone during the holidays. Everything is so about love and family… all the movies, at the restaurants, shopping, the commercials. More of just a general question.

I’m alone! I’m reading right now. I don’t mind the quiet.

@trailsillustrated whatcha reading?

I hate all the stress of being around my family. So I volunteer to get away from that crap. Maybe you could do the same for different reasons. You get to hang out with a lot of strangers and feed the needy. It is actually a lot of fun.

I miss my children and grandchildren terribly, but I’m not alone. The sweet lil lady I married is with me. : ))

If I were alone, I’d put on music I love, phone some friends up, engage in things I like to do——like my hobbies, and treat myself to something nice, like going out and buying something for myself or go watch a movie at the cinema. Even going for a nice long walk would get my mind out of the cobwebs for awhile. I’d also buy a dog or cat to keep me company. If I’m alone, I need to feel connected to something living, like an animal, even a plant. I know that sounds silly, but it’s true.

@SamIAm I’m reading ” A House for Mr. Biswas” -VS Naipal

PS and @johnpowell is right serving in a soup kitchen is actually really fun

I was thinking along the same lines as @johnpowell. Visit patients in a hospital or residents of a nursing home. Seriously. It may feel a little intimadating at first, but after the first few minutes it becomes relaxed and a very fulfilling experience. Volunteer at a library. Have a little potluck dinner with friends.

I am married, so I am not alone, but I do get bored for Christmas if we aren’t with my husband’s family. And, honestly it isn’t really about Christmas when we are with them, but the vacation in FL, seeing them in general, and seeing friends down there. When I was younger I could go to the “Matzah Ball” at the nearby dance club on Christmas Eve. The place was always packed. Or, get Chinese food out with some friends.

Chanukah I don’t feel lonely because everything is still open, I can choose the day out of the 8 I really want to do something special to celebrate it, and I have no specific expectations, just some food and light the candles.

Volunteering sounds like a great idea if you feel very lonely.

I have volunteered before and we do an orphan holiday dinner with friends.

I mean in the moments when you’re actually alone… you know, after you do those things. When you’re not with your family, or a SO.

No one has to be alone at Christmas. Even if you have no friends or family on this planet you can go to Church to be with others ro go volunteer at a shelter. I lived alone a long time and never felt lonely at Christmas, and I did spend some of them alone. Whiney people are so so so so aggravating.

Oohh. Gotcha, @SamIAm. To be honest, sometimes I just go with the lonely feeling. I’ll write or paint. Sometimes I sit and comtemplate life and pray or go for a walk.. Other times when I don’t want to be swallowed by that feeling, I make phone calls and catch-up with friends and family.

You just kind of have to not focus on it too much, not dwell on the fact that you are alone, I think, in those moments, “after you do all those things.” The advertisers and the films and the holiday T.V. specials create an unrealistic and idealized view of the holidays, and when you are alone it makes you feel like everyone is having this amazing, wonderful Christmas full of family and love except you. That is not the case. Celebrations, how people spend the holiday is different for everyone. Some are big gatherings, some are small, some are short and sweet, some are not much at all, some are totally idiosyncratic. For me, I have or find someplace to go, someone who will take me in for a few days if I am visiting someone out of town or just for the afternoon, for Christmas dinner. I have spent a couple of holidays all by myself and I managed but I didn’t really like it so I find somewhere to go, friends, family or neighbors and I enjoy that very much and then when I am alone again, that is that. I don’t dwell on it.

Fluther/facebook.

Do you have any Jewish friends you can make plans with?

Dr. Smirnoff and Strip Clubs.

The Internet of course, too.

I think it’s about not attaching to all the programming, and hyped up commercialism. I was married and did huge holiday gatherings for years. Now I have been divorced for 8 years and I enjoy keeping it simple, and don’t mind being alone a lot of the time.

My daughter is juggling 6 different Christmas scenes this year, I feel for her. Me? I’m good. We do our thing, it’s fun, but I don’t miss a thing about shopping for dozens of people and all the forced visiting.

Learning to like your own company and stay occupied and content is part of a healthy maturity.

I always feel alone though I have friends and family. You can say being alone is my hobby.
When I am at home, I generally listen to music. I listen some old songs over and over again, Sometimes, I do natural photography, I am not a savvy though. I feel it’s better to be alone than with family and friends.

Why would you not want to feel alone? I’ve always been content with my own company. You may find this excerpt by Thoreau from Walden, about solitude, enlightening:

“Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. We meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are. We have had to agree on a certain set of rules, called etiquette and politeness, to make this frequent meeting tolerable and that we need not come to open war. We meet at the post-office, and at the sociable, and about the fireside every night; we live thick and are in each other’s way, and stumble over one another, and I think that we thus lose some respect for one another. Certainly less frequency would suffice for all important and hearty communications. Consider the girls in a factory- never alone, hardly in their dreams. It would be better if there were but one inhabitant to a square mile, as where I live. The value of a man is not in his skin, that we should touch him.”

I try to make sure that I don’t spend the whole time doing what others want me to do (ie: constantly visiting relatives that I wouldn’t nomally spend time with etc) and have some time to so what I want to do, even if that is relaxing in front of the TV. If I feel like I spend the whole Christmas period trying to please others then I start to feel depressed so I make sure that I have enough time to please myself.

I would read, rent movies (maybe a movie series or TV series and make my own marathon) while doing something, bake cookie to give away, write, paint or make something, or organize a box of photos. In other words, I’d keep my hands and mind busy somehow.

It’s only when I think about being alone that could bother me, so I find ways to not be alone with my thoughts.

@linguaphile ”...bake cookie to give away…”

Upon returning home this evening, I found a prim clad box of home baked decorating my doorstep. “Oh!” says I, before the dolt within me opened the card bearing the names of my neighbors including Lilly their dog. Lust suggested they would never notice a single missing morsel. But tempting as it was to defrock the package, guilt directed my footfalls towards the neighbors empty porch.

“These were left at my doorstep by mistake. I believe they are for you”…

The newlyweds gazed at me oddly, then at themselves, and back to me with a smile…

“No silly… those are for you, from us… and Lilly”

I felt like such a Grinch… But a thankful one.

Good plan with the home baked “give aways” @linguaphile. A true gift from the giving heart and hands.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies, good story. Great writing. I hope the baked good were delicious.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies That gave me a big warm fuzzy… I’m thrilled someone did that for you. Thank you for sharing your cookies, virtually!

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies. It’s a good thing your neighbors had you at the home baked morsels, because the next steps in the intervention would have been visitations from the ghosts of Jacob Marely, hauling his chains, and of Christmas past, present and future. I’m glad the universe didn’t have to take it that far. :-)

I don’t see myself feeling alone this Christmas, but I do wonder about the amount of money those who will feel alone have saved. Maybe a lot. Why not be grateful for that if that is the case?

Just a little update: my dad flew 3,000 miles and surprised me for the holidays!!!! Can’t be alone when there’s a pops in your apartment! :) Merry Christmas to all of you

Yay! Merry Christmas!

I live alone so being alone on any holiday is no big deal. This year, in a cyber sense, I won’t be completely alone thanks to the great minds here at Fluther, and the delightful wits that hang out at another forum I am connected with.