Your First Christmas Without the Kids.

How to cope when your children don't make it home for the holidays

You take a deep breath before asking your married daughter, "When can we expect you for the holidays?"

You can hardly hear her reply: "I've been meaning to tell you. Not this year...."

When we think of Christmas, we think of a big family celebration, 16 for dinner, piles of presents, laughter, and music. After years of planning and preparing such festive gatherings, this year it will be dinner for two. Will it even seem like Christmas?

Christmas is a time most families want to spend together. Holiday planning often focuses on immediate family. New family traditions intermingle with the old, something your children would always want, and hopefully would always find a way to come home to celebrate.

Avoiding the Holiday Letdown 

But life changes. Once children are in college, working, or married with families of their own, they often are scattered across the country--even the world. It becomes more difficult to come home for the holidays every year--financially, emotionally, and practically. Perhaps this year you are facing the emptiness of their absence for the first time.

"Wayne and I couldn't," says Nancy. "We thought the only way to get through this period was to ignore Christmas. By this I mean we did no decorating, baked no Christmas cookies, and escaped to our summer place on Christmas Eve. It was awful. There we sat before an electric heater in a deserted beach town, knowing no one and feeling depressed and lonely."

According to David Knotts, a psychologist in suburban Philadelphia, major holidays have a big emotional impact on nearly every person. Family rituals over time create the anchor points in our life. Any adjustment in how you celebrate the holiday can have a major effect on how you feel about Christmas. Therefore, it is not surprising that there is an increase in the number of people seeking professional help for depression in the period surrounding Christmas. A big reason is loneliness. People become moody and get upset with themselves for being unhappy at a time of the year when we are supposed to be merry.

"Looking back," Nancy adds, "we realized we should have stayed put, maybe just toned down our holiday celebrations. If it happens again, we'll visit with friends, attend familiar church services, and invite another `lonely' couple to dinner."

Knotts says, "Refuse to allow yourself to be lonely. Loneliness is an attitude that can be changed. If you allow yourself to reminisce about how your holiday used to be and should be, you will bring on a holiday letdown. Your bad mood is likely to improve when you're in the company of special friends."

Elle and Jim have an ongoing arrangement. They share the holiday with a group of close friends who have children of similar ages to theirs. One couple in the group always seems to have no kids for Christmas, so they go to the couples who do.

"The music, decorations, laughter and food--suddenly you're not alone but caught up in a family celebration," Elle says. "It is a nice way to spend Christmas."

Holiday Rituals

Women especially find it difficult to accept the fact that they won't be celebrating the holiday with their children. "Our only child and his family live 2,000 miles away," Addie says. "Last year when he called and said that they weren't coming home, that they wanted to celebrate Christmas in their own home, I was distraught. All I did was wring my hands and repeat over and over, `it just won't be the same without the kids.' In desperation my husband, Dick, suggested we do something different and unexpected."

So Addie and Dick went on a cruise. The first few days they seemed to be having a good time. "But," Addie continues, "sometime during the Christmas Eve service in the ship chapel or the captain's dinner Christmas Day, we both became exceedingly unhappy and wanted to be home--home to telephone conversations with relatives, visiting friends, and the sounds of our favorite Christmas carols. We couldn't escape Christmas."

This year Addie and Dick are going to their son's for the holiday. She'll take her favorite cookie recipes and bake gingerbread cookies with the grandkids, go to their Christmas pageants, and share their excitement. "I must admit that although I'm disappointed I won't be doing my Christmas," Addie says, "there does come a time for children to celebrate the holiday in their own home."

Opportunity

There is no way of knowing if you will enjoy spending Christmas "alone" until you do it. "It's a question of attitude. You can think of your lack of family as an irretrievable loss or as an opportunity to explore new options," Knotts says. "This year you will have the freedom to try new things. The traditional meal you make for Christmas Eve dinner serves 12; think about getting take-out Chinese for two instead. Perhaps you always wanted to participate in the choir's singing of Handel's Messiah, but the practices and performances meant too much time away from the family. Now's your chance to do it. Or if spiritual experiences are important to you, you have more time to spend meditating and reading. Focus on the religious aspects of the holiday and you are less likely to be miserable."

You can act on the spur of the moment and respond to your own whims. Childless last Christmas, Mike still set up his elaborate train set and invited neighborhood children over to play with them. Molly delivered freshly baked cranberry bread to her neighbors. On her visits she helped wrap packages, arranged flowers, and sipped hot beverages.

Plan

Knotts warns, "Plan your activities ahead of time. Don't drift through your first holiday without children waiting for something wonderful to happen."

Sandy's "childless" holiday was totally unexpected. "I was dumbfounded when my college sophomore called and asked to spend Christmas at her boyfriend's parents' house several hundred miles from us. It was difficult to contain my disappointment. I had expected her to be with us every holiday at least until she graduated from school. After much deliberation my husband and I reluctantly gave in, provided she spend the weekend before with us. This is when we celebrated. We decorated, read the Christmas story, and exchanged presents. Christmas Day we spent in New England with my husband's mother--something we had never done before. My mother-in-law was delighted to have us finally `come home for Christmas'!"

This holiday season you can accept invitations from others, those you had to turn down because of family obligations or not wanting to spend time away from your visiting children. Or plan your own holiday events.

Usually Marianne's Christmas revolved around her four children and their families, and she saw little of her neighbors and friends. She was sure one child would always come home for the holidays. Not so a few years ago. Depressed, she let her husband talk her into hosting a potluck holiday party for 30 friends and neighbors. This kept her busy planning, baking, cleaning, and decorating the house. It was so successful that it is now an annual neighborhood event, given by the year's "loneliest" couple.

Change Your Expectations

If you go into the holiday season with the expectation that being childless will be a bleak, lonely experience, then you will simply be participating in a self-fulfilling prophecy. Instead, create new expectations. This year you have the freedom you haven't had in the recent past, time to try new things and, even at this late date, establish new traditions. You need not have a single moment of letdown! And probably next year your children will all be home again for the holidays.

Gail Morrissey is a writer living in Wayland, Massachusetts.