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In my opinion, there are three kinds of people when it comes to celebrating the holidays. The first group of people had wonderful memories of the holidays. Even if they came from dysfunctional families, sometimes all the dysfunction stops during the holiday, and, however so briefly, everything is "normal," or even idealistic during the holiday, before returning to the dysfunction of everyday life. Often, as adults, they strive to recreate these idealistic holidays they enjoyed as children, which is often unrealistic and leads to frustration. The second group of people had nightmarish holidays as children, usually caused by dysfunctional and addictive behavior by the adults in the family, which the now-grown children strive to "put right" for their children, only they often have no vision of what a healthy family celebration should look like. If they are lucky, they may have functional/healthy neighbors and friends to show them what a healthy holiday celebration/tradition looks like. The third group, by far the smallest, were lucky to have a functional (although not perfect - no one's perfect!) family life and holiday celebration. Often they are able to replicate it as adults, but not always. Here are some alternatives to celebrating the holidays: Volunteer during the holidays, ie, helping out at a soup kitchen or at an apartment complex for seniors, nursing home or Adult Congregate Living Facility. Also consider helping out at a hospital, preferably a children's hospital.Contact a LGB/T - friendly travel agency, and ask about cruises and vacations during the holidays. If you are single, ask about Christmas vacations that are geared for singles. Often, holiday excursions are deeply discounted.Go out to a restaurant (especially one with beautiful holiday decorations) with a friend or relative that has no one to celebrate the holidays with.Instead of gifts, make donations in honor of friends and family to charity. This is most important when it comes to well - to - do people, who are often very difficult to shop for.Shop year 'round for the holidays, if you can, instead of the last minute.Celebrate the holidays year 'round, such as treating friends and relatives to lunch or giving surprise gifts, and then on the holiday itself, call them or send them a holiday greeting card.Cut back on sending greeting cards.If you are artistic, make greeting cards. There are often free or low cost classes on how to do this, as well as ideas on the Internet.Explore a hobby during the holidays, such as creating artwork, writing or making music.Look at http://www.meetup.com to find holiday alternatives in your locality.Some churches and organizations put on holiday parties on the date or near the date of the holiday.Contact your nearest LGB/T Center for any holidays they may be celebrating or parties they may be giving. Many have these occasions on the actual date of the holiday.Seek out others who may be alone for the holidays, and celebrate with them.You are not alone. Remember almost all people experience stress during the holidays and for a variety of reasons. You can, reduce holiday stress by taking the time to finding your way of celebrating the holidays, instead of following how your family celebrates the holidays or copying how others celebrate the holidays.

It's been raining since New Year's eve. And our life experience SO color our emotional reactions to things. We always assume that humans think rationally, but rational thought really goes to problem solving, while life experience and subconscious go to the deeper choice and reaction issues. I always liked rain. However, since 2007, if it rains more than one day I'm deeply uncomfortable and want to start moving everything I own upstairs. Our town flooded that year. It took somewhere between six and eight weeks of rain, no just a few days, but my brain doesn't care. Its the conditions that created a situation which threw my world upside down. And this was a MINOR flood, nothing like what goes on fairly regularly with the Mississippi river. My basement flooded out and there was some danger potential, as the breaker box, hot water heater, and furnace were all in that water. We had to carefully get a pump into it to get the water out without touching any of the water in case it was electrified, and there was a very real potential of fire form a situation like that I understand, but we had a shelter to go to if needed. So it wasn't a safe situation, but it wasn't imminent danger of drowning like some people have faced. But all the loss of the things we had stored, all the cleanup, the worry about the structural safety of our house (especially since the basement stairs broke off and floated freely around down there), and the sheer amount of work after to clean it all up so we could get it professionally bleached (or whatever they put on it) to control the health issues of post flood sewage in the basement (I'm talking storm drains sewage, not the toilet ones). There was no power for a week, that made cleanup hard. And the whole town stank like you wouldn't believe. So while it wasn't as bad as it is for others, it was pretty bad during the event. And...it only happened once in the time I've lived here, and once when my grandparents moved here the second year I think, but now it colors my thoughts and feelings about the rain. And it changed the look of my town. Lost of neighborhoods are gone now, and just grassy fields left where they were. Rationally, I know it's not a threat to me unless we start hitting the four week mark that I need to start thinking about it. But the reality is that on that second day of rain, both Nikki and I start checking the river's height on the town page. We start eyeing what to move upstairs. Because brains and psyche are NOT rational. It's a good reminder to myself to stop and remember not to expect rational thought from big issues from people. It doesn't work that way. We all think it should, but brains and emotions don't work on rational. Rational is how to fix the leaking faucet, how to move the possessions out of the way of the flood. The emotional brain provides the impetus to actually fix that faucet, and when to start moving those things. And that part isn't rational, it's deeper in that rooted in a series of complex instinctive and learned behaviors related to survival. Our brains haven't cuaght up with the modern world, and they still function on survival instinct every day. That is where the fear of unknown and different comes from. It's why change is slow, and not fast. Because we have to train our brains that those feelings aren't actually helping us survive or function better as a group. Patience is they key. It's not about rational thought and statistics, it's about countering that deep emotional instinct and life experience part to effect real change.