Opting Out of the Holiday Stress Olympics

The holidays don’t always have to be a crisis, let’s stop treating them like one.

Every November, like clockwork, my inbox fills with articles about “surviving” the holidays. Social media feeds explode with memes about toxic family dinners and gift-giving anxiety. Wellness influencers launch special “holiday stress management” programs. The message is clear. Brace yourself: the holidays are coming, and they’re going to be terrible.

But what if our obsession with holiday stress is actually creating more of it?

The Stress About Stress

Here’s the counterintuitive truth: by constantly anticipating, discussing, and preparing for holiday stress, we’re essentially training ourselves to experience it. We’ve created a cultural script that tells us the holidays should be overwhelming, and then we dutifully perform our part.

Psychologists call this “anticipatory anxiety” — when worrying about a future event becomes more distressing than the event itself. Research published in Nature Reviews Neuroscience shows that uncertainty about a possible future threat disrupts our ability to cope effectively, and that anticipating a stressful event can trigger the same stress hormones (cortisol and adrenaline) as actually experiencing it. Oftentimes, anticipatory stress can be even more intense than the actual event.

We’ve turned the holidays into the stress Olympics, competing to see who has it worse. “You think your mother-in-law is difficult? Wait until you hear about mine.” “Three parties this week? I have five.”

This isn’t resilience. It’s catastrophizing with a seasonal theme.

Image: Ali Solomon / The New Yorker

What the Research Actually Says

The interesting thing is that research on holiday stress doesn’t quite support our collective panic. Yes, some people experience increased stress during the holidays. But many others report feeling happier, more connected, and more energized during this time.

According to the American Psychological Association’s study on holiday stress, 78% of people report feeling happiness often during the holidays, and 75% report feeling love. The research found that “the holidays are, first and foremost, a joyful time.” While 44% of women and 31% of men reported increased stress, this means the majority did not experience elevated stress.

Moreover, Harvard Medical School research on holiday expectations found that people who expected to feel great reported that their mood wasn’t quite as high as anticipated, while those who expected to feel miserable hadn’t felt that bad. Our expectations rarely match reality in either direction.

When we expect stress, we filter our experiences through that lens. The traffic is evidence of stress. The crowded store is proof of stress. Your aunt’s political comment becomes yet another data point confirming your hypothesis that the holidays are terrible.

By constantly validating holiday stress, we’ve inadvertently removed something crucial: permission to enjoy ourselves.

Think about it. If someone says, “I actually love the holidays,” what’s the typical response? Either skeptical eyebrow raises or accusations of being in denial. We’ve made holiday enjoyment seem naive or fake.

This creates a bizarre situation where people feel guilty for not being stressed enough. “Everyone else is overwhelmed, so what’s wrong with me that I’m actually having fun?”

The truth is that meaning, connection, and even a bit of productive hustle aren’t inherently harmful. The problem isn’t the holidays themselves; it’s the narrative we’ve constructed around them.

The Paradox of Preparation

The wellness industry has convinced us that we need extensive preparation to handle the holidays. Special meditation practices. Boundary-setting workshops. Complicated schedules to manage our social obligations.

But here’s the paradox: all this preparation might be adding to our mental load rather than reducing it. When you treat the holidays like you’re preparing for a natural disaster, you create a sense of impending doom.

Consider this thought experiment: What if you approached the holidays the same way you approached any other busy week? Not with dread and extensive defensive measures, but with normal, everyday coping mechanisms and a reasonable amount of flexibility?

In our achievement-oriented culture, busyness and stress have become markers of importance. “I’m so stressed about the holidays” is a socially acceptable way of saying “I’m important, needed, and living a full life.”

But this creates a trap. We’re invested in maintaining our stress narrative because it validates our significance. Admitting the holidays aren’t that stressful feels like admitting you don’t matter as much.

The result? We unconsciously amplify minor inconveniences into major stressors to maintain our place in the social hierarchy of importance.

Reclaiming Reality

None of this means the holidays are perfect or that real challenges don’t exist. Family dynamics can be complicated. Financial pressures are real. Loss and grief are particularly acute during times meant for celebration.

But there’s a massive difference between acknowledging genuine difficulties and participating in collective catastrophizing.

What if, instead of preparing for battle, we simply showed up? What if we stopped treating normal life challenges—making decisions about gifts, managing our time, navigating relationships—as though they require special crisis management skills?

The Radical Act of Not Catastrophizing

Here’s what I’m proposing. For just one holiday season, try opting out of the stress narrative.

This doesn’t mean being in denial or forcing toxic positivity. It means:

• Refusing to participate in competitive stress conversations

• Noticing when you’re anticipating stress that hasn’t materialized

• Distinguishing between actual problems and expected problems

• Allowing yourself to enjoy things without self-conscious commentary

• Treating holiday challenges as normal life challenges, not catastrophes

The most counterintuitive thing about holiday stress might be this: we have more control over our experience than we’ve been led to believe. Not total control because life doesn’t work that way. But more than we’re currently exercising.

What if the holidays aren’t the problem? What if the problem is our modern addiction to stress narratives, and the holidays are simply when this tendency reaches fever pitch?

Perhaps the gift we most need this season isn’t another stress-management technique. Perhaps it’s permission to stop making everything such a big deal.

Because here’s the thing: when we stop expecting disaster, when we stop performing stress, when we stop competing for who has it worst—something surprising might happen.

We might actually have a pretty decent time.

And wouldn’t that be the most counterintuitive outcome of all?