Introverts enjoy holidays in own way

Introvert

full of people visiting with each other, work a puzzle or knit while you talk. The busywork creates “psychic space,” Dembling says.

4. At the mall, “hide in plain sight.” While others frantically search for gifts, sit and people-watch. Introverts do this very well.

5. About those gifts: “Introverts are such deep thinkers,” Dembling says. “Every gift has to be perfect.” So, she makes a lot of her gifts.

6. “Choose your parties, and don’t let anyone convince you the party’s going to collapse if you leave,” she says. There’s an art to leaving a party, and, in fact, one of Dembling’s favorite partyleaving gambits involves art. She and her husband, Tom, have a secret code: “Let’s look at the art.” They start making the rounds of the home, looking at the walls, and make their way to the door, from which they exit.

“It’s a lot easier to enjoy parties if we don’t feel trapped,” she says. “Of course, at office parties, you have to put your best foot forward and pre- tend to be an extrovert. At those, you really have to put on your clown nose.”

Then, after the season’s over, take a deep breath and plunge into the new year.

“I like the concept of a clean slate,” Dembling says, although she eschews big horn-blowing New Year’s Eve parties for quieter celebrations — say, an evening looking at the night sky with just Tom.

Introverts can, indeed, survive the holidays, she says. It’s just a matter of doing it their own way.

“There’s this concept that the extrovert way is the right way,” Dembling says. “No, it’s just a way. And our way is equally valid.”