You’re allowed to love a holiday and still dread parts of it. Plan around the parts.

Two feelings about the same day are not a contradiction that has to be settled. People tend to resolve it in one of two unhelpful directions: performing a good time, or writing off the whole occasion. Usually what you dread is not the holiday but two or three specific parts of it, maybe one conversation, one hour, one relative who asks the same question every year.

Name the parts rather than the day. Then make something small for each: a time you are leaving, a walk between courses, one cousin you can stand next to. Loving most of it and planning around the rest tends to work.