Unwrapping Holiday Fatigue, New Year's Blues, and Seasonal Funk

What if the most wonderful time of the year just... isn't?

What if you're doing everything you're supposed to do, playing the right songs, showing up to the right gatherings, and you still feel like you're watching the season through glass? You're not broken. You're not wrong. You might just be a Christmas orphan. And you're not alone.

What This Episode Explores

George and Liz dig into the seasonal funk that nobody talks about. The pressure to feel festive. The exhaustion of keeping up traditions that stopped meaning anything years ago. The weird grief of holidays that don't look like they used to. And the trap of New Year's resolutions that set you up to fail before January is even over.

The Lessons That Matter

The Christmas Blues Are Not New

George opens the episode with something unexpected. Dean Martin, the guy famous for Silver Bells and Winter Wonderland, also recorded a song called The Christmas Blues.

The lyrics hit different: "I'm sure that you'll forgive me if I don't enthuse. I guess I've got the Christmas blues... When somebody wants you, somebody needs you, Christmas is a joy of joy. But friends, when you're lonely, you'll find that it's only a thing for little girls and little boys."

George sits with this for a moment.

"My mind goes to historical conversations that I'm having with people. And I'm left wondering, how many listeners out there feel like they're Christmas orphans?"

Liz raises her hand immediately. "I mean, I do."

And that's the thing. More people feel this way than we stop to think about. But there's this weird pressure during the season to put blinders on. To only see the joy. To force the happiness. To pretend.

For you: Have you been pretending this season? What would it feel like to stop?

"Are You Feeling the Season?" "I'm Trying."

George shares a moment from Thanksgiving.

"I was at a friend's house. We're out on the back porch, and I looked at one of my friends and said, 'Hey, are you feeling the season?' With my forced somewhat smile. Anticipating, by the way, holly jolly Christmas. But my friend said, 'I'm trying.'"

Here's what George admits next.

"Through that forced smile, I was trying too. I was trying to feel the season, but I wasn't feeling it. And it made me sad for my friend, but it made me sad for me understanding that I was in this preholiday funk and hadn't figured out why or how to kick it."

He takes it further. Remember making those red and green paper ring countdowns as a kid? Counting down to Christmas morning? Waking up at 5 AM to open presents?

"As a kid, it was like, let's count down to the day. Now if we were to create those red and green rings, it'd probably be a countdown till February 1st. When the freak is it over?"

For you: Are you counting down to the holiday or counting down until it's over?

The 24 Hour Shift

Liz comes into the episode with something unexpected. Her entire perspective on Christmas shifted in the past 24 hours.

She lays out her situation. Divorced earlier this year. Living in a short term rental. All her belongings, including three Christmas trees, packed in storage four and a half hours away. She'd decided she wasn't going to do Christmas this year.

Then something changed.

A friend sent her a tiny Christmas tree. Another friend invited her for Christmas Eve. Another for Christmas Day. But that's not what shifted things.

"I realized I had been telling myself a story of being an orphan."

She references a story George told in a previous episode about a piece of coal. Take a coal away from the fire too long, it goes cold. It feels disconnected from its community.

"I was trying to avoid feeling that existential fear of what if all of my best Christmases are now behind me."

Once she got honest about what she was actually afraid of, something released.

"Once I allowed myself to feel that feeling and be honest with myself about what I was afraid of, I realized I actually didn't have a problem with having a quiet year. I don't have to decorate anything. I don't have to cook anything."

For you: What are you actually afraid of this season? Is it this year, or is it every year after this?

Give It Room to Be What It Is

This becomes the through line of the episode.

George picks it up: "Give it the room to allow it to be what it is. I want people to put that in their brain."

The pressure to "get into the holiday spirit" creates a vicious cycle. If you don't feel it, others judge you. Then you judge yourself. Now you're in a reciprocal cycle of chaos in your brain just because you didn't want to wear an ugly sweater or bake Christmas cookies.

"What I love about what Liz was saying is she freed herself. Liz freed herself from the jail of judgment, from herself and from others."

Liz adds something important. She stopped watching Hallmark movies. Stopped listening to her curated Christmas playlist. Instead, she watched Die Hard. Die Hard 2. Found weird, nontraditional ways to get into the spirit.

George jumps on the word.

"You said nontraditional. No. No. No. New tradition. A new tradition."

Here's the truth bomb.

"The reason that we always play that playlist, the reason that we always drink that eggnog, the reason that we always bake those cookies is because papa and mama did. The problem with this whole holiday thing sometimes is it is the 30 or so days that we are so focused on the past that we lose the now and forget about the future."

The hope and the joy are in the now and in the future. But we're stuck in what happened every year for the last however many years.

"Right now, if you're just like, this year sucks, I can't get into the season. Make new traditions. Leave the past. Be in the now. Focus on what you're gonna do in these times for you, for your family in the future."

For you: What tradition are you holding onto that stopped serving you years ago? What new tradition could you create?

How George Navigates the Funk

George shares what he actually does when the season feels like a storm and his ship is about to sink.

Slow down. The holiday season is frantic. Brown Thursday. Black Friday. Cyber Monday. Grown grandmas punching people for toys. He puts up an invisible force field and over indexes on kindness. More thank yous. More have a nice days. He becomes the kind person in the room because most people aren't getting that.

Let go. Don't control it. Don't fight the feeling. Embrace the funk. Entertain it. Think about it. If you hold onto it and wrestle with it, how is it ever going to go away?

Lean into gratitude. Reflect on the 11 months, not the 30 days. Write down all the good things that happened this year. Be happy for all the things that are about to come.

Transport yourself into the now. It's hard not to think about Christmases with grandparents or parents. But put yourself in now instead of those past memories.

Reimagine your expectations. Do you really need to get that much stuff? Do they really need that much? You don't have to be spoiled to feel special.

If none of that works? Buy a carton of eggnog, put a little brandy in it, sit back and watch the fire, turn on some tunes, and hope for the best.

For you: Which of these do you need most right now?

The New Year's Industrial Complex

George doesn't hold back.

"There is nothing special about January 1st. I'm goal oriented 365 days a year. This idea that I'm gonna start something new because it's a new year just feels stupid."

He pulls up some stats. Top resolutions for 2024: improved fitness (48%), improved finances (38%), improved mental health (36%), lose weight (34%).

The less popular ones? Meditating regularly (5%). Drinking less alcohol (3%). Performing better at work (3%).

"If maybe you did more of these things, the other things might not be as difficult."

Then there's the built in failure. Ditch New Year's Resolution Day is January 17th. Quitters Day is the second Friday of January. We set ourselves up with lofty goals and then give ourselves named days to quit.

His solution? Break it into monthly goals.

Instead of "I'm gonna lose 100 pounds in 2024," try January: I'm gonna lose 7 pounds in the next 30 days. February: I'm gonna lose 8 pounds.

"Every month could be a resolution or a goal for that month. What this does is it starts to allow you to train your brain and actually hit these goals and feel the dopamine of success instead of the terror of not being able to do it and being judged."

And one more thing. His dad used to say it all the time: Today is the first day of the rest of your life.

Every day. Not just January 1st.

For you: What if you stopped waiting for New Year's and just started today?

Quotable Moments

"The problem with this whole holiday thing sometimes is it is the 30 or so days that we are so focused on the past that we lose the now and forget about the future."

"If you think it's gonna suck, it's gonna suck. The first thing I say to myself every morning now is: Today is going to be a good day."

"Make new traditions. Leave the past. Be in the now. Focus on what you're gonna do in these times for you, for your family in the future."

Your Next Move

George and Liz close with something tender.

George's hope for you: "Make this the year that you love yourself. That you get to know yourself. That you forgive yourself. That you move yourself from where you've been stuck, at least onto the road you need to travel to live a life beyond the default."

Liz adds: "It doesn't matter how lonely you feel, how lost you feel, how off center you feel. You are exactly where you are supposed to be. You are right on time. Let the season be whatever it is supposed to be right now."

Here's your assignment:

Get honest about the funk. Are you sad about this year, or are you afraid about every year after this? Name the real thing.

Give the season room to be what it is. Stop trying to recreate something that's gone. Stop judging yourself for not feeling festive. Let it be what it is.

Make a new tradition. Something that serves who you are now, not who you were 20 years ago.

Break the year into months. Ditch the lofty resolution. Pick one thing for January. Hit it. Feel the win. Then pick something for February.

Remind yourself daily. Today is the first day of the rest of your life. Today is going to be a good day. Say it until you believe it.

You've made it through another year. That alone is worth celebrating. Now stop waiting for January 1st and start building toward wherever you want to go.

Ready to hear the full conversation? Press play above. George shares the Dean Martin lyrics that stopped him cold, Liz reveals the 24 hour shift that changed her entire holiday perspective, and together they dismantle the New Year's resolution machine.