We can experience exclusion acutely, such as not getting invited to a holiday party. Or we can experience the changing dynamics in families and friend circles in terms of exclusion—family members who are no longer with us, relationships that are not as close, feeling on the outside of “central” experiences like even having a family, kids, etc.
I would argue that the holiday season invites even greater and more abstract senses of exclusion in the form of imagined holiday ideals. Christmas fantasies and expectations can reach such dramatic heights that it can be impossible to match in reality. Can our turkey dinner possibly match those of Instagram influencers or Hallmark movie images? Not to mention those who don’t celebrate Christmas or who don’t have a default family to turn to.
One way to understand the frenzy of December is to see it as a way to catch, to be part of, and, thus, to not be excluded from the expected joy and inclusion that one feels one must experience at Christmas, (to be a part of discreet and larger forms of social life and connection).
Indeed, isn’t this part of the ritual of social media? To constantly update and share our experiences to both mark and show that we are indeed participating—we are not excluded from—conventional holiday traditions?
A Prerequisite for More Authentic Desire
But what if we looked at exclusion from another angle and saw it not as something to overcome or avoid at all costs but as a prerequisite for more authentic desire—for more authentic and experimental ways of living and being oneself?
The psychoanalyst Adam Philips makes a convincing case for the inevitability of exclusion in human development and, moreover, the freeing benefits that this experience can open up for us.
In his essay, “On Being Left Out,” he argues that being left out from an experience opens up spaces for us to want and desire more authentically. He gives the adolescent example of not being invited to a party. When we are invited to the party, he suggests, the party does our wanting for us (it tells us how to organize our desire and affirms what we think we want).
When we don’t get invited, we have to decide what it is we really want. We might still choose to pursue the imagined inclusion and affirmation that “being invited” seems to offer—we might work on making ourselves more desirable or popular to others. We might also choose to go a different route and pursue revenge or retaliation—to create our own party and design our own social scene.
Expanding and Experimenting With Other Parts of Ourselves
The more creative solution, however, might be to expand and experiment with other parts of ourselves and our wants. In other words, not being invited—being left out—offers us the chance to envision and experiment with different parts of ourselves not available when we automatically adopt normative social desires.
For instance, we might experiment with reading, hobbies, exercise, or other curiosities that could lead and affirm underexplored parts of ourselves. These parts might be more authentic than the ones that we previously assumed were essential but were rooted in social norms and habits that we necessarily inhabit and don’t directly choose for ourselves.
Many people feel the exclusion fears most during the holiday season. We lament not having the hallmark ski vacation or the perfect photo-friendly family dinner. We may feel excluded and left out from these “normal” and expected social rituals.
However, if we see exclusion as a chance to foster our own authentic desires, we may see this as liberating rather than restricting. For instance, not having a grand family dinner to go to on Christmas might open room to explore other social rituals. On a personal note, some of my most memorable holidays have been ones where things fell through in a conventional way. Family wasn’t available, so new rituals were created with neighbours or friends that were enlivening and offered refreshing perceptions on often stale traditions.
Think of how this plays out in some of the classic holiday films of our time. In the Home Alone movies, the central plot concerns exclusion—Kevin is literally left out of his family Christmas. This exclusion, however, is not devastating but actually becomes an instance of self and social development. Kevin learns to be independent by taking care of the house and doing groceries and laundry. He also gains new social ties by engaging (or being forced to engage) with formerly scary strangers like the Central Park bird lady.
Being excluded from his family and its traditions serves to foster a key psychological principle of differentiation—healthy individualizing from his family of origin, and the formation of new social bonds and attachment.
This is not to say that traditions and conventions are bad, per se, but they can sometimes stifle or restrict our authentic desires and self-realizations. We might begin to look at the ways we feel excluded from social or family rituals as opportunities for creative experiments in living that may provide new pathways to self-knowledge.