Most people dread a thing or two about the holidays, like travel and their mother-in-law (or traveling with their mother-in-law). But I've always disliked everything about them: Christmas carols, traffic gridlock, early closing hours at my favorite restaurants. I'd practically hold my breath from Thanksgiving to New Year's, willing the weeks to pass quickly until January 1, when my friends would emerge from the holiday haze of family obligations to join me in our usual jaunt of happy hours, dinner parties and more. I hated not having them around, but deep down, I was also jealous they had the chance to celebrate family traditions that had been passed down from generation to generation, while I struggled to connect with the holidays in even a superficial way, like getting excited about decorating a Christmas tree.

Born in China and raised by atheist parents, I felt left out every holiday season, lacking a connection to the faith that underlies a holiday like Christmas or Hanukkah and a cultural history with the secular traditions that accompany them. I can remember celebrating only one Christmas with my parents in the almost 25 years I've lived in the U.S.: Christmas 1999, when my mom bought a plug-in tree for our living room, decorated it with dollar-store ornaments, and placed Christina Aguilera's eponymous debut album under it for me. We'd recently moved into the first house that my parents had bought, and I think my mom was trying to make it feel like a home. But once we fully unpacked, we never celebrated Christmas again.

Holidays were especially dreadful when I was single, a weeks-long reminder that I was alone. With boyfriends, I could at least latch on to their celebrations and customs. The season became a way for me to not only bond with them, but their families, which I particularly liked as an only child whose family, except for my parents, all live a 13-hour plane ride away in China. I spent so many Decembers in Boca Raton, Florida, with my college boyfriend, who was Jewish, that I can still recite the Hanukkah blessings to this day. Later I dated a Christian boy from the South for a couple of years, which turned me into a Christmas lover. Or, more specifically, a Christmas party lover — I'd plan my dress for his family's huge party by August. It's not that I actually liked making small talk with his family friends. But the party gave me a purpose — and a place to be — on a certain, special date of the year. Finally, I felt like I had a connection to the holidays.

So this November, fresh out of a breakup with a man I'd browsed engagement rings with, I feared the upcoming holiday season would be the worst. Pre-breakup, my parents had planned to join me for his family's Thanksgiving dinner, and I worried the season would now be clouded by "What if" questions about our relationship. I also worried I'd be bored without work and colleagues to distract me. I worried most that I'd feel lonely, as I'd had a partner most of the last decade, who had given me a tradition to belong to.

Instead, I just felt free, unlike previous years when my Thanksgiving plans were determined by my boyfriend. Without someone else's schedule to follow, I ended up spending Thanksgiving eating leftover Chinese in a new condo that I'd just bought and watching The West Wing on Netflix in bed. It wasn't a storybook Thanksgiving: There wasn't any turkey or pumpkin pie, and I missed sitting around a table with family and friends. But at the end of the holiday, I felt happy — not lonely — that I'd spent it exactly how I wanted to, even if the experience didn't look like what it does in the movies or my own friends' lives.

Spending Thanksgiving alone this year made me realize that, for years, I'd been trying to make the holidays a big, meaningful part of my life just because they were big, meaningful parts of other people's lives. I was embracing someone else's routine, usually a boyfriend's, as if going through the motions of decorating a tree or lighting a menorah would magically give me a history with holidays. (It didn't.) I realized that copying someone else's love of holiday traditions is as silly and pointless as trying to copy someone else's career, relationship, or other life experiences — especially when you don't even like some parts of that tradition. Flying solo and not having a Thanksgiving plan in place forced me to come to terms with the fact that my family didn't raise me to value holidays — and that's OK. And I don't need a boyfriend and his holiday customs to fill that void.

Like Thanksgiving, I'll spend this Christmas alone, and single, a situation that would have filled me with panic just a couple years ago. I don't have plans yet. In fact, not knowing what I'll be doing is the nicest part. Single and alone, I nonetheless feel at peace, and dare I say, merry, about Christmas.

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