My mother-in-law, Louise, passed away at 94 last June. Her birthday? Christmas Day. Two years before that, we lost Max (also at 94)—her husband, my father-in-law.

Last December marked our family’s first holiday season without either of them. Everything felt different. Not just sad—different. Like the shape of the season itself had changed. 

My husband, his three siblings, and our large extended family navigated a new kind of season—one filled with “firsts” without either of them. First family gathering. First Thanksgiving. First Christmas. First New Year. With an extended family brimming with grandchildren, nieces, and nephews, the list of firsts seems endless. 

If you’re facing your first holiday season after loss, I want to share what helped us cope—and why there’s no right way to grieve

You Don’t Have to Celebrate the Same Way

The first holiday season without someone you love is profoundly difficult. But here’s what matters: how you’ve celebrated in the past doesn’t dictate how you must celebrate now. You’re allowed to do things differently.

Consider creating a new tradition—not to escape your grief or erase the person who died, but to help you survive it. When Kevin O’Keeffe’s father passed away, his mother suggested a radical departure: spending Christmas in the Bahamas. “The idea of leaving at all was unusual,” he reflected, “since we were always a home-for-Christmas family.” Now, traveling somewhere different each year has become their anchor. Instead of sitting at home with an empty chair, they gave themselves freedom.

Travel isn’t always possible, of course. But you can still plan something different. My husband’s family has always gathered a week before Thanksgiving and again a week before Christmas. After Max died, those celebrations merged into one November gathering. Last year, it shrank even further—just the siblings and their spouses. Each shift acknowledged our changing reality, an evolution toward what our celebrations look like now.

There’s No “Right” Way to Grieve

When my own father died, my mother’s grief became so consuming that basic tasks felt impossible. Someone had to hold steady, and that was me. My brothers responded similarly—moving through necessities without visible emotion. We weren’t unfeeling; we were surviving. Weeks later, my mother accused us of not being upset because she hadn’t seen us cry. I had to tell her: that wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t true.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross gave us the Five Stages of Grief in 1969, but here’s what often gets lost in translation: these stages aren’t a ladder you climb in order. They’re not a checklist. Kübler-Ross herself clarified this later—people experience grief in a nonlinear manner, and some may skip stages entirely or revisit earlier ones. The five stages are a framework for understanding common reactions, not a recipe for how grief should look.

As Winston’s Wish puts it: “There are no set rules or stages of grief, and there is no right or wrong way to feel after a death.”

Someone who can’t cry isn’t less devastated than someone who can’t stop. Someone who participates in holiday activities isn’t disrespecting their loss. Grief is wildly personal, and the ways it shows up—or doesn’t—are all valid.

Joy and Grief Can Coexist

Even though you’ve lost someone important to you, you might laugh at a holiday gathering. You might feel a genuine moment of happiness. And then you might immediately feel terrible about feeling good.

Linda Walter, LCSW, offers this reassurance: “If you find yourself smiling, laughing, even enjoying yourself, don’t feel guilty. You are allowed to feel joy, even in grief.”

Conflicting emotions don’t cancel each other out. You can miss someone desperately and still experience moments of lightness. Both are real. Both are okay.

What Actually Matters

Coping with loss forces us to ask hard questions:

• Which traditions do we want to keep?
• Which no longer serve us?
• What did we only continue because “that’s how we’ve always done it”?
  
  

As children, repeating family rituals gives us a sense of belonging and security. As adults, we get to choose. A tradition that doesn’t align with who you’ve become isn’t sacred—it’s just a habit. According to What’s Your Grief, the key is to ground yourself in values rather than in specific practices. Values remain constant even as traditions shift. They provide meaning and a sense of belonging as the landscape around you changes.

Ask yourself: What do I actually value? Is it faith, family, food, friendship, volunteering, or tradition? Build your holidays around those values, not the way things used to be.

This Christmas

For our family, that means something new. For years, we’d stop by on Christmas to wish them both a Merry Christmas and Louise a Happy Birthday. The larger family celebrations took place earlier in December at the Knights of Columbus in their small town, but Christmas Day was always reserved for this quick visit.

Max loved bowling and was genuinely skilled at it. Mark’s sister marked the first Christmas without him with a bowling pin decorated like a snowman at his graveside. Now, we’ll visit both of them there—our way of honoring who they were and what they meant to us.

“There’s honor in such a well-lived life…there’s healing in remembering…there’s hope in knowing love goes on forever.” — Diana Manning