Dwain Northey (Gen X)

The holiday season arrives every year wrapped in its familiar colors—warm lights strung across rooftops, storefronts playing the same five songs, families crowding airports with suitcases full of sweaters and anticipation. It’s the time of year we’re told is meant for family, for friends, for community. We’re encouraged to gather, to celebrate, to embrace the people who make us feel at home. But beneath the glow and glitter, there’s another truth that sits quietly in the corner: for many people, this season doesn’t feel joyous at all. In fact, it can feel lonelier than any other time of year.

There’s a particular kind of silence that settles in when everyone else seems to have somewhere to be. Not the peaceful silence of a winter morning, but the hollow kind—the one that echoes a little when you open the door to an empty apartment. Some people receive invitations to gatherings and parties but turn them down, not because they dislike the hosts or the festivities, but because of that strange, heavy feeling of being alone in a crowded room. Of standing among laughter and inside jokes and thinking, I don’t belong here. Of watching people connect and wondering why their own hands feel too full of invisible weight to reach back.

That feeling is real. It’s valid. And it’s far more common than most people realize. The holiday season has a way of magnifying contrasts: joy and sadness, togetherness and isolation, gratitude and grief. If you’re already carrying loneliness, this time of year can press on it like a bruise.

But maybe the most important thing to remember is this: the story we tell about the holidays—that they are supposed to look a certain way, filled with certain people, punctuated with certain moments—is just that: a story. For many, the holidays are messy, complicated, bittersweet. Some are healing from loss. Some are estranged from family. Some are rebuilding their lives from scratch. And some simply feel out of rhythm with the world around them.

There’s no shame in that. There’s no failure in it. And there’s certainly no rule that says you have to pretend your heart is lighter than it is.

If you know someone who drifts to the edges this time of year—someone who slips quietly out of invitations or keeps conversations short—reach out, gently. Not with pity, but with presence. Sometimes a simple “thinking of you” means more than any wrapped gift. Sometimes inclusion isn’t about the party at all, but about the reminder that someone notices whether you’re there.

And if you are the person sitting with that loneliness, stepping back from celebrations because the noise feels too sharp or the cheer feels too distant, know this: you’re not invisible. Your experience matters just as much as the brightest holiday tableau. There’s no wrong way to move through this season. You can decline invitations, create your own rituals, find comfort in quieter moments, or simply take it day by day. There is room in the holiday landscape for your feelings, even the heavy ones.

The season may be marketed as a nonstop parade of joy, but real human lives are deeper and more varied than that. The truth is, the holidays aren’t universally magical—they never have been. But they can still hold space for all of us: the joyful, the grieving, the connected, and the quietly lonely.

And maybe that’s the real meaning of the season—not perfection, not endless cheer, but compassion. A reminder to be a little softer with each other, and with ourselves.