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Single parenting is hard. Christmas is stressful. Single parenting at Christmas time? Potentially devastating. Even when your co-parent is collaborative, friendly to you and committed to the kids, there is still a sense of loss when you aren’t able to spend Christmas with your children. The joy of seeing gleeful faces on Christmas morning or the connection to family tradition with your Christmas Eve rituals may be lost to your divorce. When you co-parent with a jerk, Christmas can be a total nightmare. It brings up some of the worst feelings: your relationship with your ex, self-doubt, fears that a happy childhood is lost for your kids, financial stress, and family conflict. So what can you do to help yourself and your kids cope? First, grab a box of tissues and hide from the kids. Some boo-hooing is in order.
1. Acknowledge your negative feelings. Ignore, for a minute, the social pressure to be cheerful during the holidays. Admit that you aren’t okay, you don’t feel jolly, and you won’t be having a merry Christmas. After your wallowing session, you can take a step back and sort through which of those feelings are exaggerated and what you can do to make things better.
2. __Figure out some workarounds. __Does your family traditionally open a single package on Christmas Eve? Skype it. Is there a tablet or iPod at the other parent’s house? Load favorite apps on devices for both you and your kids. Buy two copies of treasured books. You can read and play along together over the phone.
3. __Invest in the creative potential of Santa’s power. __Santa can do a lot, including leaving presents in the car that are waiting for your kids when you pick them up again, or tucking a hidden present into your kid’s coat pocket. Santa can leave presents when and where he wants. He’s flexible, and he can create magic in nontraditional places at nontraditional times if you’ll only let him.
4.__ Get your geek on. __Make a DVD of your kids’ favorite photos and set it to their favorite music. Audio record yourself reading a story and put it on a CD, thumb drive, mp3 player, or your kid’s cell phone. Post a private video message on YouTube for your kids to watch whenever they want.
5.__ Connect with other single moms. __No one else knows what it’s really like, not even your family. Not even your parents, even if they are divorced too. The family court system is different now, and you need moms who are deep in the middle of it that can genuinely understand and empathize. Make plans to be together and find strength in numbers.
6.__ Schedule your sadness. __Give your grief some space, an opportunity to be treated as a valid feeling that is at odds with what you wish you could feel instead. Then plan a time for those feelings to be set aside so that you can seek out and embrace the joys in life as well. You may not be completely able to fit your feelings into a calendar, but reserving some time to explicitly deal with your emotional pain may help prevent that pain from taking over.
7.__ Do grown-up things. __Make a list of benefits to having your kids gone. Rated R movies! Girls Night Out! All the foods you love that your kids hate! A nice Merlot! A clean house! Sleeping in! A six hour TNG-athon! Take care of yourself.
8.__ Celebrate Three Kings Day. __Trying to celebrate Christmas a couple of days early or late can feel phony, and serve to highlight the difficulties of what you and your kids are going through by pretending that something as socially important as Christmas can just be shifted to another day. Three Kings Day is celebrated in many cultures throughout the world, and there is a rich body of traditions you and your kids can draw on. The twelve days of Christmas? They actually refer to the days between Christmas and Epiphany. Magic presents delivered in the night? Leave out some grass for the Kings’ horse and the Kings will leave presents just like Santa. You’ll get the benefit of shopping for gifts during those after Christmas sales, too. For most moms, this is a holiday you’ll never have to share with your ex. It can belong to you and your kids, and can be just as reliable and full of tradition as you wish your Christmas could be.
Not all of these suggestions will work for everyone. I’ve been single parenting for a long time, and my son and I have only been able to share two Christmases together in the last decade. It’s tough, for both of us. But over the years, we’ve found ways to make it work. Three Kings Day is a huge deal. We’ll stay home from work and school, wake up early to presents under the tree, and then we’re throwing a party for the other single moms and kids we know. We make, and find, our own holiday joy every year. I’ll handle my sadness privately, without letting it take over.
Merry Christmas and Happy Three Kings Day to all the single moms and their kids. We can do it!
