I’m Not a Fan of the Holidays—But This Year It’s Different

The holidays have never been cozy for me. Quite the opposite: I used to fight my way through them. Literally. December became a season of what in the olden days of Twitter we dubbed “discourse”—a time to yell at people online just to feel something. 

My mom is Jewish and my Dad grew up Catholic, but by the time they adopted me, neither of them were particularly religious. We didn’t have a Christmas tree or menorah, and gift giving was pretty low-key. Sometimes we did some Kwanzaa-adjacent celebrations, but it was all fairly tame. 

The holidays weren’t traumatic or sad in our family—they just weren’t a big deal. When I got older, I found that modern holiday culture, with its hyper-commercial focus, leaves very little room for anything other than visible happiness. That can be brutal if you’re single, far from family, or grieving someone who’s no longer there. 

For most of my adult life, the stretch between Thanksgiving and January has been something to endure, not enjoy. It was a seasonal exercise in survival, punctuated by Twitter fights.

The topic didn’t really matter; the motivation was always the same. I was lonely. I was tired. I was bored. And arguing was easier than admitting that this time of year made me feel untethered while everyone else seemed firmly rooted in family, plans, and belonging somewhere.

Fighting to fill the void

Not knowing where I belong has been a theme throughout my life. For too many years, this feeling defined the holidays for me. 

Other people disappeared into their December lives of travel and tradition, and I stayed behind on Twitter—back when it was somewhat fun, before the Nazis took over—convincing myself that jumping into the day’s discourse and batting down bad takes from people who were loud and wrong meant I wasn’t alone. 

Sometimes the arguments were about real things—racism, abortion rights, the slow moral decay of this country. Other times they were about nothing at all, like which Winchester brother on Supernatural is best. (The answer is Dean, obviously.). 

Twitter gave me a feeling of purpose during a stretch of the year when I didn’t have much of one. It offered instant community, instant engagement, and a way to express my boredom through digital fisticuffs with other people who were probably equally bored. I was posting, people were responding, and for a few hours at a time, that felt like doing something.

Maybe occasionally it was. But mostly, I was just avoiding the quiet of my empty home.

I don’t think this is unusual, by the way. I think a lot of people use the internet this way during the holidays—not because they’re addicted to discourse, but because it can stand in for presence. 

It fills the hours when other people are busy being with someone else. It gives shape—purpose, even—to days that might otherwise stretch out, quiet and unclaimed. And sometimes that sort of engagement is community. Online spaces can be real, sustaining, and meaningful. 

But for me, it was mostly a way to avoid noticing how alone I felt at a time of year that is designed very loudly to remind you of what you’re supposed to have.

An online connection turned real

But this December feels different—not because the holidays themselves have changed, but because my life has. 

For the first time, I’m moving through the holiday season with a partner. And it turns out having someone to be with, someone to talk with, sit with, share the silence with, and sometimes be miserable with changes the shape of December in ways that I couldn’t fully appreciate until it happened to me. 

That shift didn’t come from abandoning the internet or logging off for good. It came from an unexpected connection that started right there.

During Christmas week 2023, I got into a particularly ugly online argument with some aggressively stupid people. It was one of the rare times I let an internet fight actually get to me, to the point where I couldn’t sit in my empty house and let it go. 

So I messaged a woman I’d had a crush on—someone who seemed like she would get it without a lot of explanation. Someone who understood both the argument and the exhaustion underneath it.

Portia Burch was someone I’d noticed on Twitter and TikTok, where she had amassed nearly a quarter of a million followers. One of the first things I noticed is how gorgeous she is. (It’s hard not to.)

But I also noticed that Portia has a real grace about her, particularly when she’s educating her followers on ways to reassess their relationships to whiteness and anti-Blackness. I’ve seen her change how white women think about themselves and the world, and then they teach other white women to rethink those relationships. It’s remarkable. 

Now this was someone I knew would understand the moment. I was irritated, amped up, full of energy with nowhere productive to put it. So I slid into her DMs. 

That conversation gave my restless, buzzing energy somewhere else to go. Here was a person who was as politically-minded as I am, who suffered the same racism and microaggressions that I did, and who understood what I was talking about without me having to defend myself or explain why the racist thing someone said to me was actually racist. 

I stopped focusing so much of my energy fighting online and focused more of it on her—developing our budding  connection. 

And over time, as our relationship deepened, the urge to be online all the time—to argue for the sake of arguing—started to fade. I went to a friend’s 50th birthday in Chicago in February 2023 and met Portia, who had recently moved to Chicago, for a drink. And that sparked months of texting and watching TV shows together. (We bonded over Vampire Diaries, and I introduced her to Doctor Who.) 

The point is: When I wasn’t lonely, I didn’t need the internet in the same way. The need to be right, or loud, or constantly present just wasn’t there.

Happy holidays, even with the world on fire

Two years later, Portia lives in Colorado with me and we’re celebrating our first holiday season as life partners. We put up our tree together. We’ve spent many nights by its glowing light watching Doctor Who. We bought matching onesies and took cheesy photos. We hung stockings on the mantle for our four dogs. We’re building traditions that we hope will last a lifetime.

That’s why this December hits different.

Not because I like the winter season more. It still seems forced and hyper-commercial. But the holidays no longer feel like something I have to push through by force. For the first time in a long time, December isn’t an emotional obstacle course. It feels manageable. Good-ish, even. Which, for me, is notable. 

To be clear: the world is still a mess. This country is still a mess. The Supreme Court is going to continue the deconstruction of democracy and human rights. The social media takes are still bad—worse, even. There is no shortage of people eager to argue on the internet.

I just don’t feel compelled to join them.

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