Splitting holidays down the middle
HUB Reporter —
Speaking as a kid who spent mother’s day with my dad, I know firsthand that holidays split between two parents are never really fluid. Tensions are high, feelings get hurt, and there is always constant shifting back and forth between households. Oh, the joy divorce can bring.
In the second grade, senior Allie Burt’s parents divorced. Like many other kids from split families, Burt worries about leaving one parent for another, especially during the holidays.
“I feel like my parents feel sad about their kids not waking up and having Christmas morning at their house,” Burt said.
Burt does not remember ever having Christmas with her entire family, “I don’t really have any of those happy Christmas memories of us all together.”
Senior Hannah Kaplan agrees: “I think [holidays split between two parents] kind of takes away from that holiday feeling because I’m always worry about ‘oh I have to go to my dad’s house now,’ or ‘I’m back at my mom’s house,’” she said.
Kaplan has spent five years of holidays with a divorced family, but unlike Burt, Kaplan does have memories of celebrating holidays with her family as a whole, a some-what bittersweet nostalgia . “I feel like it takes away a lot from what it used to be like, now it’s more worrying about my parents,” Kaplan said.
You have captured that pain well. I appreciate that divorce creates a hum bug feeling overlying what should be the joyous holiday spirit. I encourage you all not to make your holidays about your parents who created this mess. The holidays should not be about parents feelings but about you, the children, your feelings and your happiness. Yes mothers day at your dad’s was rough on us all, but that did not take away that you are my lovely daughters. It made me realize that every day with my girls is mothers day and all the holidays wrapped into one, how lucky is that! 🙂 .