These stories amount to something more than a celebration of the holidays dotting our calendars from month to month. Even though holidays can occasion a return to the familiar, these stories challenge traditional associations. Each story serves to complicate how we observe the human observation of holidays and offers a nuanced understanding of related themes such as family and motherhood, travel, grief and mourning processes, and memory. More generally, holidays are days of observance, and that aspect alone offers a lot to unpack.

Contributions by: Gail Galloway Adams, David Crouse, Molly Giles, Carole L. Glickfeld, Jacquelin Gorman, Peter LaSalle, Karin Lin-Greenberg, Becky Mandelbaum, Alyce Miller, Dianne Nelson Oberhansly, Peter Selgin, Hugh Sheehy, Sandra Thompson