You’re probably going to expect me to trot out the standard-issue blogger fare of “what I’m thankful for” in this immediate pre-Thanksgiving post.
Well, y’all should know me better than that.
I want to talk about what holidays are like as a divorced parent. Specifically, I want to talk about date fluidity.
I want to talk about what holidays are like as a divorced parent. Specifically, I want to talk about date fluidity. Click To TweetI can feel the wind created by the mass nodding of heads of divorced parents who share custody. Those of you in more traditional familial arrangements are probably a little confused.
Think about less-traditional families sort of like the US Federal government. No, we’re not massive incompetent bureaucracies led by an orange-skinned tyrannical maniac. What we do have in common is a certain set schedule. For most branches of government, that schedule is generally Monday through Friday from eight to five. When a Federal holiday falls on a weekend, there’s some date fluidity. For example, the most recent Veterans’ Day fell on Sunday, November 11th. As a result, the Federal government created two versions – the official holiday on Sunday the 11th, and the day it was “celebrated,” on Monday the 12th.
Divorced parents have similar situations, particularly in shared custody situations where holidays alternate in some fashion. For example, my ex-wife has custody of my daughter on Thanksgiving this year, so we celebrated Thanksgiving yesterday with our family. Thus, the official holiday on Thursday, and our “celebrated” version yesterday.
If you’re new to shared custody, get used to this. If you’re obsessive about celebrating holidays on the actual holiday date, you’re going to be miserable. It took my current partner a long time to get used to this. In her mind, the holidays happened on the dates. Anything outside of that was somehow… lesser.
Now we happily celebrate holidays on the nearest convenient day. When it’s not our year to have Christmas on the 25th, we celebrate it on the nearest day that works. Thanksgiving happens either the weekend before or after. Birthdays happen on the nearest available weekend.
Once you get used to this idea, it’s freeing. You’re only tied to the rest of the world’s schedule by season, rather than strict adherence to an arbitrarily chosen date. You can celebrate when it’s good for you to celebrate. Christmas is on Tuesday, but you want it Friday night? Rock on! Birthday falls on Thursday, but you wanna party Saturday! No problem!
In the words of Adam Savage, “I reject your reality and substitute my own.”
What starts as a necessity becomes an advantage.
It’s like having your own flux capacitor.