6 Very Relatable Holiday Stories From Gen-X Women

By TueNight Crew

The temps are dropping, our fellow Gen-X sisters are wrapping up the year, and we’re in the midst of peak holiday season. Whether you love this time of year or struggle with the holidays, we’ve pulled 6 stories from our archives to help get you through it.

The Grinch Had It Right: Presents Ruin the Holidays

That was my moment of clarity: holiday gift-giving is not great because of the gift-giving. The December holidays, birthdays and Valentine’s Day are all preceded by a mad scramble to find “something special,” or in my family, increasingly irate texts: “What do you want?” “You haven’t told me what you want!”

What I want is to not exchange gifts. 

In Defense of Over-Holidaying

We were just getting started. Reader, we roasted a Christmas goose. Have you ever tried roasting a goose? Don’t. We ate roasted chestnuts, also disgusting. We went to the Messiah, and my Jewish boyfriend stood up and bellowed “Haaaale-lujah!” with the best of them. We adopted Operation Santa kids, ice skated in Rockefeller Center under the tree, got properly stupefied by the Rockettes Christmas Spectacular. We listened to the funky, utterly bizarre “Al Green Christmas” album on repeat. We sat in a hot tub wearing Santa hats and drinking eggnog, which turned out to be a tactical error.

Comfort and Oy! Raising Kids in a Mixed-Faith Household

But I wonder, sometimes, how much of an impact I’m having, when even in our own house the Jewish holidays are sometimes marginalized and overshadowed. Complicating matters is the fact that I love having an opportunity to participate in the events I was excluded from as a child — setting out Christmas stockings, dying Easter eggs. But then, my husband enjoys celebrating the Jewish holidays as well; he’s typically the one to remind me to light the candles on the menorah each of the eight nights of Chanukah, and he’s gotten freakishly good at spinning the dreidel.

13 Homemade Gifts that Don’t Suck

Let this be a lesson: Don’t do stupid homemade gifts. Don’t decoupage anything, don’t use papier mache unless you actually have talent, and – whatever you do – don’t bedazzle anything. NOTHING. Hear me?

If you’re dying to express your creativity or don’t have a ton of scratch or just enjoy making things, here are some ideas that don’t suck.

How to Survive the Deep Freeze — Without Booze

I hate winter. Especially once January hits, and we’ve got four long months ahead and nothing but freezing forecasts and deceptive wind chills. I get blue. Really blue. Like a lot of us do: Seasonal Affective Disorder is in the DSM, after all, and while I may suffer from a touch of it, I think most of my melancholy comes from this disease called alcoholism

Making a New Year’s Resolution? Consider These 5 Tips

Forty-four percent of Americans make New Year’s resolutions, and I know I always do. Now that I’m obsessed with habits, I’m more inclined to make resolutions than ever, in fact. If my happiness and habits research has convinced me of anything, it has convinced me that resolutions – made right – can make a huge difference in boosting happiness.

So how do you resolve well? This is trickier than it sounds.

Looking for more goodness from Gen-X women writers? Check out more holiday stories here on TueNight.com.

Originally Published December 19, 2022. Updated December 20, 2022.