Do you feel sad on holidays not celebrating with extended family

[Anonymous]

My family is dead and my extended family is over 500 miles away. I camped this weekend and hardly was aware it was a holiday, until the people at the next site went on an egg hunt. You've just got to accept the situation for what it is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you have no local family, and family is too far away to spend holidays with, do you feel sad on holidays that you don't have extended family to celebrate with? I feel sad, and I feel sad for my kids too. My husband works most major holidays, so pre-kids I was alone on holidays, which was depressing, and now with kids I try to find festive things to do/make a nice meal but it still feels lonely. Today DH was working and I took the kids to the park and I saw so many huge extended families having BBQs/picnics and it just made me feel very lonely. Our friends never invite us to their family celebrations/are always busy with their own family celebrations or they travel to see family on holidays.

I am 35 and a first-generation immigrant (meaning, I was born in the US, my parents are from abroad.) So I grew up with my entire extended family on the other side of the world. Even phoning took four or five hours of failed attempts, and was prohibitively expensive.

Looking back, I didn't really miss celebrating holidays with extended family, or feel lonely, because I just didn't have the concept that this was possible. I also never saw huge families celebrating our religion's holidays, because at the time there weren't many immigrants from my parents' country (and there still aren't many huge families who are all in the US and live near each other). I married a man from my parents' country, and at first assumed that he must have had a childhood full of large celebrations. But actually his family were all crazily hardworking surgeons, very focused on work/academics, and far too busy to celebrate holidays at all!

I guess if it were something I'd grown up with and that I suddenly didn't have, I would have felt lonely. Or if it were something I regularly saw everyone else doing and felt left out of.

Maybe your friends don't know that you'd like an invite? Or maybe you can join some local community organization and attend a picnic/BBQ/whatnot that way.

[Anonymous]

My family is about 3 hours south and my husband's 3 hours north. Every holiday, we are in the car for hours on end and it just sucks. But they guilt us into the whole family thing, and so we go. Yesterday we boycotted! We did the Easter vigil service on Saturday and so spent yesterday in a haze of candy, outside blanket sitting and playing and just time with our little family (toddler and baby). It was the most wonderful holiday EVER. I was for sure I'd feel sad, but we see our families often enough that I just actually really enjoyed the lazy day that didn't require traffic, rushed dinners or packing daycare bags at midnight...

[Anonymous]

I get you OP, but my family functions and is loving even if they don't agree on every single thing.

[Anonymous]

OP, I'm with you, DH works most holidays so it's just me and the kids, family is a days drive away.