December has a way of amplifying everything. The lights feel brighter. The music sounds louder. The memories sit closer to the surface. And for a lot of Black families, the holidays don’t just bring joy. They bring absence.

An empty chair where someone used to sit. A favorite dish no one wants to make anymore because it hurts too much. A laugh you almost hear before remembering it’s gone. Grief doesn’t wait its turn just because it’s the holidays. It shows up anyway, uninvited, right alongside the decorations.

But in Black families, grief is rarely given space to pause the season. We keep cooking. We keep hosting. We keep showing up. Tradition moves forward even when our hearts lag behind.

December is when loss gets loud.

For many of us, the holidays are tied to people as much as rituals. The aunt who always hosted. The uncle who carved the turkey. The grandmother whose house smelled like everything good in the world. When they’re gone, the season doesn’t just feel sad. It feels unfamiliar. Like muscle memory without the muscle.

And yet, there’s often an unspoken expectation in Black households to push through. To be strong. To keep it moving. To not “bring the mood down.” Grief becomes something you carry quietly while passing plates and smiling for photos.

That silence is its own burden.

Black families have always been taught resilience as survival. Historically, there wasn’t time or space to fall apart. Life demanded strength, even when it hurt. That legacy still shows up during the holidays. We honor the dead by continuing traditions. We celebrate life because tomorrow was never promised. Both things can be true. But so can the ache.

The problem is, we rarely say that part out loud.

Holiday grief doesn’t look like constant tears. Sometimes it looks like irritation. Or exhaustion. Or pulling back from family gatherings you used to love. Sometimes it’s laughing too hard, staying busy on purpose, or volunteering to cook everything so you don’t have to sit with your thoughts.

For some families, grief shows up as over-celebration. Bigger parties. Louder music. More people. As if joy, multiplied, can drown out what’s missing. For others, it’s the opposite. Smaller gatherings. Fewer traditions. A quiet acknowledgment that things aren’t the same anymore.

Neither response is wrong.

What often gets overlooked is how layered Black grief can be. It’s personal loss mixed with collective memory. It’s mourning people while also navigating a world that rarely slows down to acknowledge our pain. It’s carrying grief while still being the glue that holds everyone together.

And December asks a lot of that glue.

There’s also the generational aspect. Older family members may process grief by maintaining tradition at all costs. Younger ones may want to talk about it, to name what’s missing, to change how things look. That tension can create quiet conflict at the table. One person wanting to honor the past by recreating it. Another wanting to honor it by doing something different.

Both are acts of love.

What Black families often do beautifully, even without naming it, is integrate grief into the celebration. We tell stories about the people who aren’t there anymore. We laugh at their old jokes. We cook their recipes “the way they used to.” We pour a drink in their honor. We speak their names, even casually, because forgetting them feels worse than the pain of remembering.

That’s not avoidance. That’s remembrance.

But there’s room to do more. To let grief be acknowledged without it being treated like a disruption. To allow someone to sit out a tradition without guilt. To normalize the idea that joy and sadness can coexist at the same table.

There’s something powerful about saying, “This is hard for me this year,” and being met with understanding instead of pressure. About lighting a candle for someone who’s gone. About changing traditions when the old ones hurt too much. About creating new rituals that make space for both memory and healing.

The holidays don’t have to look the same forever. That’s not betrayal. That’s life.

December grief doesn’t mean you’re ungrateful. It doesn’t mean you’re stuck. It means you loved deeply. And love doesn’t disappear just because the calendar flips or the music gets festive.

So if the season feels heavier this year, you’re not alone. If the joy feels complicated, that’s honest. If the table has empty seats and your heart keeps noticing them, that makes sense.

Black families have always found ways to hold joy and pain at the same time. The holidays are just where that truth becomes impossible to ignore.

And maybe this season, the most meaningful tradition is giving grief the space it’s always deserved.