Grief and the Holidays: How to Survive the Holidays as a Widow When You’re Already Dreading Them

Why Grief and the Holidays Can Feel Harder in the Fall

Recently, I asked the widows in my online community when they wanted me to start talking about grief and the holidays. Hundreds responded, and their answer was pretty clear:

Now.

It wasn't even October yet, and women were already thinking about Thanksgiving and Christmas. Some were approaching their first holiday season without their husbands.

Others had been widowed for years.

They talked about Christmas morning, Thanksgiving dinner, decorations, Christmas cards, church, family gatherings and New Year's Eve. But again and again, they also talked about dreading all of it before it even arrived.

One woman said the anticipation was the worst part.

I understood exactly what she meant.

The first year, the thought is: I have to do this without him.

In the years that follow, sometimes it becomes: I have to do this without him again.

You can picture his empty chair before anyone has set the table. You can dread pulling out the Christmas decorations while it's still warm outside. You can wonder what Christmas morning will feel like weeks before December 25.

And sometimes the first pumpkin-spice display is enough to remind you that it's all coming.

If that's where you are, you don't have to wait until Thanksgiving to think about what you need. In fact, I think there are some things worth considering before the holidays ever get here.

Make a Plan for the Hard Dates

One thing that struck me as I read hundreds of responses from widows was how many weren't facing one difficult holiday. They were looking at an entire season of hard dates.

His birthday might be in October. Your anniversary might be in November. Then there's Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and New Year's. Maybe the anniversary of his death is mixed in there too. One widow described a string of difficult dates that stretched all the way through Valentine's Day.

No wonder she was exhausted just thinking about it.

If you have The Widow's Comeback 365-Day Grieving Calendar, this is a good time to get it out. Look at October, November and December and start filling in the dates you already know may be difficult. If you don't use my calendar, your regular calendar works just fine.

Mark the birthdays and anniversaries. Mark the family gatherings and church services. Mark the traditions you know are coming. And pay attention to the days that may look completely ordinary to everyone else but mean something to you.

Then look at the calendar as a whole.

You don't have to solve every date right now. But sometimes knowing where the potholes are makes them a little easier to navigate.

You Don't Have to Keep Every Tradition

One of the strangest things about becoming a widow is realizing how many traditions belonged to the two of you.

Maybe he carved the turkey. He hung the outside lights. He made Christmas morning pancakes. He complained about putting up the tree and then stood back and admired it when you were finished.

Maybe you always went to his family's house on Christmas Eve. Maybe he read the Christmas story. Maybe there was a ridiculous ornament he insisted on hanging front and center every single year.

Then he dies, and you're left looking at all those traditions wondering what you're supposed to do with them.

Some traditions may feel comforting. Keep them.

Some may feel impossible. Don't.

And some may simply need to change.

That can include the physical stuff too. If opening the boxes of Christmas decorations you collected together feels unbearable, leave them in the attic.

Go buy some new decorations for this Christmas.

And next Christmas too, if you want.

You can use the old decorations again someday. Or you may decide you never want to. You don't have to make that decision while you're standing in the attic crying over an ornament you bought together in 1998.

What you choose this Christmas isn't a contract with every Christmas for the rest of your life.

Make a Plan A and a Plan B

I love a Plan B, especially during grief.

Plan A might be Thanksgiving dinner at your daughter's house. Plan B might be driving yourself so you can leave whenever you want.

Plan A might be Christmas Eve church. Plan B might be watching the service from home if getting dressed and walking into that sanctuary without him feels like too much that night.

Plan A might be hosting Christmas dinner. Plan B might involve pizza.

The point isn't to assume everything will go badly. The point is to give yourself choices.

Grief is unpredictable. Something that sounded perfectly manageable two weeks ago can suddenly feel impossible when the day arrives. Having an exit strategy means you don't have to make a difficult decision while you're already overwhelmed.

Decide how much togetherness you actually want

People sometimes assume the solution to holiday loneliness is making sure a widow isn't alone.

I wish it were that simple.

Sometimes being surrounded by people makes his absence even more obvious.

One widow in my community described going to Christmas Eve church and looking around at all the couples and families. Then the service ended, everyone walked out together, and she went to her car alone.

That's a very particular kind of loneliness.

Another widow wondered whether her husband's family truly wanted her at the holidays anymore or whether, after decades of celebrating together, they now invited her because they felt obligated.

Other women told me they were terrified of being alone.

So instead of assuming that you should fill every empty space on your calendar, ask yourself what you actually want.

Maybe you need a house full of people. Maybe dinner with four people sounds better than dinner with fourteen. Maybe you want to attend the party but leave before dessert. Maybe you'd rather wake up Christmas morning alone, drink coffee in your pajamas and not speak to another human until noon.

The goal isn't to avoid being alone at all costs.

It's to know the difference between solitude you choose and loneliness you don't.

Prepare for the little things nobody warns you about

We expect the big things to hurt. Christmas morning without him? Of course. His empty chair at Thanksgiving? Of course.

But widowhood has a way of hiding grief in ridiculously ordinary places.

One that came up in the responses I received was Christmas cards. How do you sign them now? For years it was both of your names. Then one Christmas, suddenly it isn't. One widow told me she hadn't expected how painful it would be to sign only her own name.

There are dozens of moments like that: taking his stocking out of the box—or deciding not to. Making the recipe he always loved. Hearing the Christmas song he sang badly on purpose. Buying one fewer gift. Walking back to the car alone after church.

It's a hundred tiny reminders that this life used to have two people in it.

Those moments can catch you completely off guard. You can be doing pretty well and then find yourself crying in the Christmas-card aisle at Target.

That's grief too.

You don't have to produce Christmas

You can buy the pie.

You can skip the cards.

You can put up one tree instead of three—or no tree at all. You can invite fewer people, serve soup, decline the party or order the entire Christmas dinner from somewhere else.

Several of the widows who responded to me talked about simplifying their holidays. I think there is a lot of wisdom in that.

Grief takes energy. So does creating a holiday.

If you have children or grandchildren, ask them what actually matters to them. You might discover that the enormous list you've been carrying around in your head can be reduced to a favorite cookie, one movie and Christmas morning.

You don't have to save every tradition to save Christmas.

I like to run away

This is one of my favorite holiday strategies.

Our first Thanksgiving without Eric, my aunt and uncle invited us to the Country Club Plaza to eat dinner in front of the window while the plaza lights turned on. The kids and I stayed in a hotel, and the next night we moved to a second hotel and watched the city Christmas tree lighting.

It was completely different.

That was the point.

For our first Christmas without Eric, we ran away again—to Palm Springs and Disneyland.

Years later, after my dad died, my mom, my kids and I went on a cruise to Mexico.

I have learned there is something to be said for changing the scenery when every familiar place is screaming that somebody is missing.

Travel doesn't make grief disappear. I didn't leave Eric's absence at the Kansas City airport. But being somewhere new removed the expectation that the holiday should look the way it always had.

You don't have to go to Disneyland or Mexico. Maybe you spend Christmas in a nearby hotel. Rent a cabin. Visit your sister. Take a road trip. Go somewhere you've always wanted to see.

Or stay home.

The important thing is recognizing that “because we've always done it this way” is no longer a sufficient reason to do anything.

When you have children or grandchildren, it gets complicated

I wasn't only a widow when Eric died. I was the mother of a ten- and twelve-year-old whose dad had died.

They were grieving too.

And while there were holidays I didn't particularly want to celebrate, I wanted my children to still have holidays. Several widows in my community described that same tension with their children or grandchildren.

I don't want Christmas, but I want Christmas for them.

Those two things can exist together.

Ask what matters most to them. Maybe it's one recipe, decorating cookies, driving around to look at lights or opening presents in pajamas.

You can preserve something meaningful for them without forcing yourself to recreate the entire holiday you produced when your husband was alive.

And they may be more open to changing things than you think.

Find a way to include him—if that feels right

Eric is still part of our Christmas.

Every year, I put a present under the tree for each of us from him.

It's one small way I make room for him in a holiday he isn't physically here to celebrate.

Your way may be completely different. You might hang his favorite ornament, make his favorite pie, light a candle, tell a story about him, raise a glass or say his name in a prayer.

Or you may not want to do anything formal at all.

Sometimes his absence is already sitting at the table. You don't need to create a ceremony around it.

The point isn't that you should include him in a particular way. It's that you don't have to erase him to make everyone else comfortable.

Don't forget about New Year's

This was one of the things that surprised me most when I read the responses from my widow community.

I expected Christmas to dominate the conversation, and it did. But New Year's carried a different kind of pain.

Several widows described the feeling of entering another year without their husbands. One said it felt as though she were leaving him behind. Another talked about each new year taking her farther away from the last year he had been alive.

Christmas emphasizes his absence.

New Year's emphasizes the passage of time.

The calendar tells us we're supposed to be excited about fresh starts, new goals and what's ahead. Meanwhile, a widow may be thinking, I don't want another year farther away from him.

If that's you, you don't have to manufacture enthusiasm at midnight.

And moving forward doesn't mean leaving your husband behind.

You carry the life you shared with you.

Your first holiday without him—and your tenth

We talk a lot about the firsts after someone dies: the first Thanksgiving, first Christmas, first New Year's.

Those firsts can be brutal.

But the responses from my community reminded me of something equally important.

Women who had been widowed for years were still talking about difficult holidays.

The grief changes. The holidays change. You change.

You may create traditions you genuinely love. You may find yourself excited about Christmas again. And then one year, a song or an ornament or the smell of his favorite pie may hit differently.

There is no expiration date on missing your husband.

That's why the question isn't simply, How do I survive my first Christmas without him?

Sometimes the question is, What do I need this Christmas?

Start before the holidays start

If you're already dreading the holidays, don't dismiss the feeling because it's only October.

Look at your calendar. Talk to your family. Decide what matters and what doesn't. Think about which traditions you want, which ones you want to change and which ones can stay packed away this year.

Make a Plan A and a Plan B.

And remember: You aren't required to figure out how to do everything you and your husband used to do, only now without him.

When Eric first died, that's what I thought I had to do. I looked at fall and saw a season full of things we had always done together that were now somehow my responsibility.

But that wasn't really the assignment.

I had to begin figuring out what our life looked like now. And eventually, that included figuring out what our holidays looked like too.

That process didn't happen in one Christmas.

So perhaps the question to ask yourself this year isn't:

How am I going to make the holidays the way they used to be without him?

Maybe it's simply:

What do I need the holidays to look like this year?

Read More from The Widow’s Comeback

If you’re looking for more support as you navigate life after losing your husband, you may also want to read:

12 Best Books for Widows That Truly Help After Losing a Spouse A collection of books for widows that offer comfort, understanding, practical help and stories of women rebuilding their lives after loss.

The Invisible Work of Widowhood: When Grief Leaves You Carrying Everything Alone The holidays can make everything you now carry alone feel even heavier. This is for the widow exhausted by the decisions, responsibilities and invisible work that used to be shared by two.

The Empty Chair: When Widowhood Changes Where You Belong Holidays and family gatherings can make the loss of your place beside your husband especially visible. This article explores the hidden loss of belonging that can come with widowhood.

About Lisa Woolery

Lisa Woolery is an award-winning author and the founder of The Widow’s Comeback, a community offering practical tools, honest conversations and encouragement for widows rebuilding their lives after loss.

After her husband, Eric, died unexpectedly in 2019, Lisa began writing about the parts of widowhood people don’t always talk about—the everyday losses, changing identity and complicated work of building a life you never expected to live.

She is the author of The Widow’s Comeback, The Widow’s Comeback 365-Day Grieving Calendar and The Widow’s Comeback Grief Journal. Through her books, articles, workshops and online community, Lisa helps widows know they are not alone—and reminds them that grief and a meaningful life can exist side by side.