Thanksgiving for One: Eating Alone for the Holidays?
By Nancy Lee Bentley, * Wholistic Health Expert. Posted on .
To: Letter to Me
From: Myself
Re: Thanksgiving Alone
Date: November 22
Hi there,
Yea, I’m here. I know. It’s Thanksgiving, and I’m……well, I could say I’m just checking my email here for a minute before the family gets here….or I had to jump online to check on the tweaks for that special cranberry recipe. Or, believably, I could be sending a couple of emails before getting together for the traditional Thanksgiving meal with the family tonight.
Actually……I’m alone. It’s Thanksgiving Day, when almost everyone I know, almost everyone in the world is raising a glass with their loved ones or together in an intimate gathering with their friends. And here I am, all by myself, alone.
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Yea, what’s up with That...being ALONE for Thanksgiving?? I’ve spent a few Christmases alone, because I was travelling or doing a consulting job and couldn’t get back. I even spent one New Year’s Eve, snuggled up by the fire with a small bottle of bubbly (probably NA cider) by myself.
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Eating alone. Hey, eating alone any other day is no big deal. I eat alone all the time. Most of us now do. In fact, a new Hartman Group study just revealed that almost half (46%) of all adult eating occasions are now solitary. And it’s not just snacking alone that’s driving the trend, 40% of all adult meals are now also eaten alone.
There are lots of reasons for this, of course, including more working women, shorter lunch breaks, eating at your desk, snacks as meals, more single-parent households, fewer sit down family meals and meals, in general, less likely to be seen as traditional social occasions.
But Thanksgiving dining alone, that’s a completely different matter, right?
Well, it depends. It’s not just about being and/or eating alone, it really boils down to our attitudes around it. “Enjoying the holidays on your own is all about intention,” says Author Sasha Cagen, sharing insights from her book, Quirkyalone: A Manifesto for Uncompromising Romantics. “Spending time alone during a holiday, if you’re intentional about it, can be really meaningful and a beautiful experience,”she told the Huffington Post.
