“Preparing” for the holiday season means different things to everyone. For some, it’s brining turkey and ham (godspeed), and for some, it’s an emotional rollercoaster of missing family but knowing that staying home for the holidays is the best choice for you. City Cast Boise podcast host Lindsay Van Allen falls into the latter camp, so executive producer Frankie Barnhill interviewed her about what that experience is like.
What do you think is making holiday estrangement more common?
“ I think a lot of it goes back to the polarization in our society, and there's a lot of causes for that, and I'm not going to morally say if it's right or if it's wrong, I just think it's the reality. [P]olitics are personal, and so there was estrangement that happened [after the 2016 election], there was separation among families. We saw that even more with the pandemic in 2020, where people felt like their health was being put at risk by family members who didn't want to follow precautions or get vaccinated. And then now with this election in 2024, I think we're seeing that again.”
When you made this decision for yourself, how did you deal with those feelings?
“In those first few years, the things that were most helpful were making space for me to feel those feelings, and realizing that I was mourning what I thought the holidays should look like. [I was mourning] what I thought the holidays meant and what I wanted the holidays to look like for my children and realizing that that might not be a reality.”
How do you create that new reality of what you want the holidays to look like?
“ I decided that we were going to focus on one or two dishes per holiday that really make the holiday feel special, make it feel like home. We're going to do a couple activities that we all really like, that the kids really look forward to and that I was going to focus more on us being together. And enjoying our time together, even if it's just doing something simple, doing a puzzle or just having some cookies and watching a Christmas show, as opposed to just curating this very perfect experience, but I'm not enjoying it.”
