How to Navigate Grief During the Holidays
Originally published: November 15, 2025 • Updated: September 2026
Here’s the Gist
The holidays can make someone’s absence much more obvious. Traditions, meals, music, travel, and family gatherings all create reminders of who is no longer there.
Grief does not have one correct presentation. You might feel sad. You might be irritated. You might enjoy yourself and then feel guilty about enjoying yourself.
You do not have to keep every tradition exactly the same, and you also do not have to create a meaningful ritual if you do not want one.
Grief is not automatically a mental-health disorder and does not automatically require therapy.
If the death itself was traumatic and you are also dealing with intrusive memories, avoidance, nightmares, guilt, or hypervigilance connected to how the person died, trauma may need its own attention.
When “Joyful” Doesn’t Feel True
The holidays have a pretty specific script.
Everybody is together.
Everybody is happy to be together.
Traditions feel warm and familiar.
The same people sit in the same places.
Until somebody isn’t there anymore. Then the empty chair is really obvious. Maybe this is the first holiday without them. Maybe they died ten years ago and you’re surprised by how quickly one song, one recipe, or one stupid family joke brings them right back to mind. That doesn’t mean you’ve gone backward. It means holidays are full of repetition, and repetition creates reminders. For men, grief also doesn’t always look like sitting around feeling visibly sad. Maybe you stay busy. Take over the cooking. Handle the travel. Make sure everybody else is okay. Talk about the person who died very little. Or have a perfectly good Christmas morning and then get hit by something unexpectedly that afternoon. There isn’t one correct way this is supposed to look.
Why the Holidays Can Make the Loss Feel Closer
The Traditions Are Connected to People
Holiday traditions are rarely just activities. Someone always made that dish. Someone sat in that chair. Someone told the same story every year. Someone called Christmas morning. So when the tradition comes back and the person doesn’t, the absence gets another opportunity to be noticeable. That isn’t your body mysteriously remembering something you don’t. There is a pretty understandable connection between the reminder and the person you associate with it.
Everybody Else Is Supposed to Be Happy
There can be something especially irritating about grieving during a season that keeps insisting everyone should be having the best time of the year. You may actually enjoy parts of it. You may hate parts of it. You may be doing fine until someone asks: Are you okay? and suddenly you’re not. You don’t have to make your emotional experience match the decorations.
The Family Is Different Now
One person can hold a surprising amount of a family together. Maybe they hosted. Kept conversations going. Managed conflict. Made the plans. Called everyone. When that person dies, you aren’t only missing them. Sometimes the entire way the family functions changes. That can become particularly obvious when everybody is back together.
The Anticipation Can Be Hard Too
Sometimes December 25 isn’t actually the worst part. It’s the three weeks beforehand thinking:
How are we going to do this without him?
Who is going to sit there?
Is Mom going to be okay?
Do we still make the same meal?
Your mind can spend a lot of time trying to solve an emotional experience before it happens. Then the day arrives and it may be terrible. Or easier than you expected. Or both.
Staying Busy Can Help. Notice When It Becomes the Only Option.
There is nothing inherently wrong with staying busy during a difficult holiday. Maybe cooking gives you something useful to do. Maybe taking the kids outside gives you a break. Maybe you genuinely do better when there is structure.
Fine.
But notice whether you cannot let yourself stop. You volunteer for every task. Clean while everyone else sits together. Leave the room whenever the person who died comes up. Work through the holiday even when you don’t need to. Drink enough that you don’t have to feel much by the end of the night. That tells us something different. Not: You aren’t grieving correctly. But: There may be something here you are working very hard not to encounter. That is useful information.
You Get to Decide What You Keep and What You Change
There is a strange pressure after someone dies to figure out the right way to honor them.
Keep every tradition
Create a new tradition
Make their favorite food
Tell stories
Light a candle
Visit the cemetery
You can do those things. You can also not do them. Maybe making Dad’s pie feels meaningful. Maybe it makes everyone miserable and nobody even likes the pie. You are allowed to stop making the pie. Maybe everyone wants to talk about the person who died. Maybe this year nobody does. There does not have to be a ceremonial moment where the family processes the loss together. Ask a simpler question: What do we actually want this year to look like? Maybe you keep the parts of the holiday that still matter. Change the parts that don’t work anymore. Add something new. Or make almost no changes at all. The tradition is allowed to serve the people who are still here.
You Can Still Decide How You Want to Show Up
Grief may affect what you feel. It does not have to determine every choice you make.
Maybe this holiday matters because being with your kids matters to you.
Maybe family matters to you even though part of being with family hurts right now.
Maybe you want to talk about the person who died because remembering them is important to you.
Maybe you don’t want the entire holiday to become about the loss because there are other people in the room you also love.
There isn’t a universally correct choice. The question is: What matters to me here, and what would it look like to behave consistently with that?
You might feel sad while doing something meaningful.
You might laugh and still miss them.
You might enjoy yourself and think about them ten minutes later.
Those things do not cancel one another. You do not have to wait until grief gives you permission to participate in your life.
Feeling Good Does Not Mean You Forgot Them
Guilt can sneak into grief in strange ways. You laugh. Have a really good day. Take a trip. Start dating again. Enjoy Christmas. And suddenly there is a thought: Should I be enjoying this? Sometimes people start acting as though continuing to hurt is evidence that the person still matters. It isn’t. Your pain is not the measurement of your relationship. Enjoying something now does not revise how important that person was to you. And having moments where you don’t think about them is not betrayal. You are allowed to have a life that contains both: I miss this person. and There are things here I still want to participate in.
When Grief and Trauma Are Both Part of the Picture
Grief and PTSD are not the same thing. You can grieve someone deeply without having PTSD. But sometimes the way someone died was traumatic too. Maybe you witnessed the death. Found the person. Were involved in a medical emergency. Lost someone suddenly or violently. Or there are specific things about the circumstances of the death that keep showing up when you don’t want them to. Now there may be two different things happening. You miss the person. And you are having intrusive memories of how they died. You wish they were still here. And you are avoiding the hospital where it happened. You feel sad about the loss. And you blame yourself for something you believe you should have done differently. Those pieces may need different attention. Trauma treatment does not remove grief. If PTSD developed around the death, evidence-based treatments like Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), Prolonged Exposure (PE), or Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET) can address the trauma symptoms connected to what happened. You may still miss the person afterward. That isn’t treatment failure. It means grief and trauma were never the same problem to begin with.
When Grief Might Need More Attention
There is no expiration date where missing someone becomes abnormal. And a difficult anniversary or holiday years later does not mean something has gone wrong. But there are times when grief becomes much more persistent and impairing. For a smaller group of people, intense grief continues in a way that significantly interferes with daily life. Prolonged Grief Disorder is a specific diagnosis for persistent, severe grief. In adults, the loss must have occurred at least 12 months earlier, and the grief has to cause significant distress or impairment beyond what would be expected within the person’s cultural, social, or religious context. You do not need to diagnose yourself. The practical question is: What is this grief doing to my life? Can you still participate in relationships? Work? Things that matter to you? Can you imagine a future that includes the loss without your entire future being organized around it? If grief has become persistently disabling rather than something you are carrying while continuing to live, that deserves a closer look. And if grief itself is the primary problem rather than trauma, the right treatment may be grief-focused rather than trauma-focused.
You Don’t Have to Have the Right Kind of Holiday
Maybe this year is hard.
Maybe it's easier than you expected.
Maybe you cry in the morning and genuinely enjoy dinner.
Maybe you keep the traditions.
Maybe you change almost everything.
Maybe you don't want to talk about the person who died.
Maybe you tell the same story about them three times.
There is no prize for performing grief correctly. Pay attention to what matters to you. Make room for the fact that the person is missing. And make room for the people and experiences that are still here too. Those things can coexist. You don't have to choose between remembering someone you lost and continuing to participate in the life you still have. That is probably the piece I'd want the reader leaving with.
FAQs About Grief During the Holidays
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Holidays contain a lot of reminders.
Traditions, food, music, family gatherings, travel, and even where people sit can be strongly associated with someone who died.
That can make the absence more noticeable, even years later. APA guidance on holiday grief similarly notes that traditions and first holidays without someone can make loss especially salient.
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Yes.
Enjoying part of your holiday does not mean the person mattered less or that you have moved on incorrectly.
You can miss someone and have a good day.
Both are true.
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Only if you want to.
Some traditions may feel important because they maintain a connection with the person.
Others may no longer work for your family.
You are allowed to keep some, change some, and drop some entirely.
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Grief and trauma are different, although both can occur after the same death.
Trauma becomes more relevant when you're experiencing symptoms connected to how the death happened, such as unwanted memories, nightmares, avoidance of reminders, hypervigilance, or significant guilt about what you believe you should have done.
Missing the person itself is grief.
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Most grief does not become a disorder.
Prolonged Grief Disorder involves persistent, intense grief that significantly interferes with life. For adults, DSM-5-TR requires at least 12 months since the death before this diagnosis is made.
A difficult holiday by itself does not mean you have prolonged grief.
If the holidays are bringing up memories of how someone died, not only how much you miss them, trauma may be part of what you're dealing with.
I specialize in evidence-based trauma therapy for men using CPT, PE, and NET. If a traumatic loss has left you dealing with intrusive memories, avoidance, guilt, or other PTSD symptoms, schedule a free consultation call and we can talk about whether trauma treatment makes sense.
Explore related topics:
| Trauma & PTSD | Trauma Therapy | Stress & Anxiety | Guilt & Shame |Life Transitions | Relationships & Connection |
About the Author
Brittany Shannon, Ph.D., is a trauma therapist for men with more than 10 years of experience. She trained in the VA system, working with veterans at both outpatient and residential levels of care, and brings that expertise into her private practice today. Based in Kentucky, Dr. Shannon offers virtual therapy across all 43 PSYPACT states, specializing in trauma recovery, PTSD treatment, and men’s mental health. Her work focuses on helping men heal from painful experiences, break free from survival mode, and move forward with clarity and confidence.
You don’t have to keep pushing through this on your own.
