The first holiday season after a divorce is genuinely one of the hardest stretches most families go through. The holidays are built on tradition, on togetherness, on a particular idea of what family looks like. When that structure changes, even holidays you used to love can start to feel loaded with grief and logistical stress in equal measure.
This post is for parents who are trying to figure out how to make the holidays work for their kids while also surviving the season themselves.
Start With Your Kids, Not the Schedule
Before getting into the logistics of who goes where and when, it helps to have an honest conversation with yourself about what actually matters to your children during this time of year.
For younger kids, the magic of the holidays is largely sensory and routine-based. The tree, the food, the specific traditions you’ve always done together. The good news is that most of those things can travel. The ornaments can go up at both houses. The special breakfast can happen on Christmas morning at whichever house they’re waking up in. The tradition itself matters more than the location.
For older kids and teenagers, the holidays often bring more visible grief about the family changing. They may be less interested in performing holiday cheer and more likely to be quiet, withdrawn, or irritable. That’s worth understanding and making room for rather than pushing against. Pressuring a teenager to be festive when they’re sad about their family situation tends to backfire.
The single most useful question to ask your kids, in an age-appropriate way, is what they care most about during the holidays. What are the things they’d be most upset to miss? Starting from their actual priorities rather than assumptions tends to produce better plans.
Negotiate the Schedule Early and in Writing
Holiday custody arrangements are one of the most common sources of conflict between co-parents, and a significant portion of that conflict comes from ambiguity. Vague agreements that worked fine in an ordinary week tend to fall apart when there’s a long weekend, extended family gatherings, school breaks, and heightened emotions all colliding at once.
Nail down the specifics as early as you can. Exact pickup and drop-off times rather than general windows. What happens if travel is involved. Who is responsible for getting the kids from one place to another. What the plan is for school breaks that may extend beyond just the holiday itself. The more specific the agreement, the fewer decisions you have to make in real time when tensions are already running high.
If your parenting plan already addresses holiday schedules, review it before the season starts so there are no surprises. If it doesn’t, now is a good time to work that out, ideally in writing, before you’re already in the middle of the holidays trying to negotiate on the fly.
Give Yourself Permission to Grieve Your Own Holidays
A lot of the focus during this period goes to protecting the kids’ experience of the holidays. That’s right and appropriate. But parents also lose something real when the family structure changes, and that loss tends to land especially hard during a season that’s so tied to togetherness.
If your children are with their other parent on Christmas morning for the first time, you’re going to feel that. If Thanksgiving looks completely different from every Thanksgiving you’ve had before, that’s a genuine loss worth acknowledging rather than pushing through on willpower alone.
Giving yourself space to grieve doesn’t mean falling apart. It means being honest about the fact that this is hard and treating yourself with some of the same compassion you’d extend to a friend in the same situation.
Build New Traditions Instead of Just Mourning the Old Ones
One of the most effective things you can do during the holidays is to start building a new normal rather than spending the season aware of everything that’s missing from the old one.
This doesn’t have to be elaborate. A new tradition can be as simple as a specific movie you watch together on a particular night, a new food you make, a place you go, or a way you give back. The novelty actually works in your favor here because there’s no prior version of the tradition to compare it to. It just becomes the thing you do, and over time it becomes something your kids associate with warmth and consistency rather than with loss.
Your kids will take their cues partly from you. If you approach the adjusted holiday season with genuine effort, even when it’s hard, they’re more likely to find things to enjoy in it. That’s not about faking emotions. It’s about choosing, where you can, to focus on what’s present rather than what’s absent.
Have a Plan for Your Time Without the Kids
The hours or days when the children are with their other parent can be the most difficult part of the holiday season for many parents. The house is quiet. Everyone else seems to be with family. It’s easy to feel profoundly alone.
Plan for that time in advance rather than letting it arrive unexpectedly. Make specific plans with friends or family. Consider volunteering, which puts you around other people and shifts the focus outward. Travel if you’re able to, even somewhere small and nearby. Start something you’ve been putting off: a project, a book, a skill you’ve wanted to learn.
Having something to look forward to during those windows doesn’t eliminate the sadness, but it gives you something to anchor to, and it tends to move the time faster than sitting at home watching everyone else’s holiday photos roll by on social media.
Let Go of Competing for the Best Holiday
There’s a pattern that sometimes develops between co-parents where the holidays become a kind of competition. Who gave the better gifts, who threw the better party, who provided the more magical experience. It usually comes from a good place, from wanting your children to be happy and wanting to feel like a good parent. But it often ends up being more about the parents than the kids.
Children don’t need extravagance. They need presence and consistency. A quiet evening making cookies together with a parent who is genuinely engaged and calm is worth more to a child than an elaborate holiday spectacle delivered by a parent who is stressed, distracted, or performatively trying to outdo the other household.
Give what you can give genuinely and let that be enough.
It Gets Easier
The first holiday season after a divorce is almost always the hardest one. By the second year, you have a template. By the third, the new normal starts to feel like just normal.
That’s not much comfort when you’re in the middle of the first one, but it’s worth knowing. Families do adapt. Children are more resilient than we fear. And parents who make steady, loving choices during a hard season tend to look back and find that they managed it better than they thought they would.
At Benjamin Legal, P.C., we understand that behind every legal case is a family trying to find its footing. If you need guidance on parenting plans, custody arrangements, or any aspect of your family law matter in Phoenix or Maricopa County, we’re here to help. Reach out to schedule a consultation with our team.
