The first holiday that was split was Thanksgiving, and I didn't have the boys.
I'm not going to dress that up. It was hard. I was looking at an empty house, my family was traveling, and there was nowhere to go on the family side. If you're reading this a few weeks out from your own first one, you probably already know the feeling I mean. It isn't the day itself. It's the shape of the day with a hole in the middle of it.
None of what follows is perfect. It's just what I did, and part of why I started HalfTimeDad.
The empty house
What saved that Thanksgiving was a friend. I'd call him part of my village now, though I wouldn't have used that word then. He invited me to his family's Thanksgiving.
It was a lifesaver. Partly as a distraction, which I needed. Partly as time with a friend. But mostly because I got to feel welcomed in a situation that was about as uncomfortable as it gets: a grown man at somebody else's family table, on the day his own family looked nothing like it used to.
If someone asks you this year, say yes. It will feel strange for about ten minutes, and then it won't.
The Christmas we did together
That first Christmas, we put our differences aside and opened presents all together, even though the separation was still fresh.
The boys were young, and I think it was the right move for us. It gave them one familiar morning in the middle of everything changing, and I believe it helped them start to process what was happening. Since then, Christmas has gone every other year.
I want to be careful here, because this is the part that does not work for everyone. It worked for us because we could both hold it together for a morning. If your situation is high conflict, or it isn't safe, or one of you can't do it yet, then doing it together is not the goal. A calm handoff and a good day on your side is.
Mountaintops
The most useful thing anyone told me about the holidays came from a friend. He said the holidays are mountaintops.
The boys will remember those mountaintop moments. But they'll also remember the Tuesday after school. The Thursday you decided not to cook and went and got takeout. All of those little things are just as important as the mountaintops.
That changed how I thought about the years I don't have them for a holiday. Missing a mountaintop is real. It's also one day out of a lot of Tuesdays.
It gets easier
The holidays have gotten easier every year, and smoother.
So have the ordinary days in between. Life transitions. Everyone, the boys included, settles into a routine and gets comfortable with it. The first one is the hardest one you'll have.
If this is your first year, find your table, take the invitation, and keep showing up for the Tuesdays.