There is a scarcity of friendship, but not of friends.

Plenty of people around you count as friends while very few of the relationships are friendship. The distinction lies in what gets asked and given: whether you could call at two in the morning, whether either of you says the difficult thing, whether the connection survives one of you needing something. Company is abundant and the deeper version is rare.

Which argues for concentration rather than breadth. Pick two people and put real time into them this season, at the cost of the wider circle if it comes to that. Depth gets built by repetition and by being available when it is inconvenient.