59 pages • 1 hour read
Christina LaurenIn a Holidaze
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Improving Relationships by Embracing Authenticity
The characters in In a Holidaze have a capacious and generous understanding of family, and this mindset foregrounds the novel’s physical and emotional setting. Mae is uncertain about much of her life and sees her found family as her only real foundation. Through both the time loop and her love for Andrew, she comes to accept that she can find lasting emotional security in the form of open communication and a calm acceptance of her own evolution alongside those who care about her.
The progression of the story illustrates Mae’s considerable progress in this arena, and to that end, her family situation at the opening of the novel is in dire straits as she bleakly ruminates on the idea that she has just ruined her life by kissing Theo. As she says, “Theo is like family, and these things tend to get messy” (11). On an entirely separate front, Mae is emotionally devastated when Ricky and Lisa announce their intentions to sell the cabin, and she instantly worries that the group will drift apart without a central gathering location. These pressures lead to her plea to the universe to reveal what will make her truly happy, thereby triggering the supernatural time loop that drives the plot.
Initially, Mae allows herself to get sidetracked from her true mission to improve her own relationships, and she suffers a series of personal setbacks when she misses the broader philosophical point and strives to preserve every detail of annual traditions like the snow sculpture contest. With her rigid adherence to tradition, Mae ignores the growing realization that in each version of the holiday that she experiences, she feels most secure in Andrew’s presence. As the time loop restarts once again, however, Mae’s third attempt allows her to become more forthright. At first, this shift is largely humorous, as when she tells Andrew’s mother that her baking is inedible. Later, however, she eagerly embraces the spontaneity of the snowball fight, even though it ruins the snow sculpture tradition, as she finally realizes that the organic nature of the group’s collective joy is more important than preserving the illusion that nothing in life will ever change.
Most importantly, Mae finds even greater contentment once she finally confesses her feelings to Andrew and discovers that he shares her romantic interest. However, this new development forces her to focus more closely on her own unprocessed internal issues, and she begins to wonder if staying anchored in time depends on her emotional state. For this reason, Mae chooses not to tell Andrew the truth about her doubts, inadvertently creating more distance between them. Her turmoil is only addressed when her mother and Andrew’s parents assure her that they love her and that relationship conflict is normal among the younger generations. Finally accepting that those around her do not expect perfection, Mae finds the courage to make a grand gesture for Andrew: She paints a portrait of them as an elderly couple. In this context, her assurance to Andrew that “even if it never turns into more, [he is] the only one who makes [her] that happy” indicates just how far her internal journey has progressed (281). Ultimately, Mae comes to accept that even if Andrew cannot forgive her, she has still become more secure in herself thanks to loving him. Their return to the cabin in the Epilogue indicates that Mae’s sense of self is strongly rooted in both her romance and in her other relationships.
The Interplay of Fate and Personal Choice
The authors use the time-loop plot to introduce questions of the power and importance of personal agency, and although the “magical” elements of the plot provide the impetus for Mae to explore new options, she is ultimately the one who must decide to trust in her own desires and interests and actively reshape her future. This new sense of purpose helps to ensure her romantic happiness and overall fulfillment.
Mae initially assumes that the experience of repeating the Christmas vacation is related to a higher purpose and has been invoked by her wish for happiness. As the novel progresses, each reset of the time loop indicates a “false direction” on her part; the first occurs when Mae takes Benny’s advice to talk to her father, and when she once again finds herself on the plane, she takes this as a cosmic hint to try a different approach. Unfortunately, she also decides that this reset is evidence that she is not meant to act on her own behalf, and she concludes that her mission must be to prevent Andrew’s parents from selling the cabin. She also erroneously views the time loop as a form of security that will protect her from suffering the consequences of any missteps she might make. All these initial approaches reveal her tendency to rely on the nebulous advantages of “fate” to correct her mistakes. While this mindset does make her bolder in her interactions, it also allows her to dodge the emotional implications of her situation.
While Mae’s conversations with Andrew show her embracing the benefits of new personal choices, their later conversations reintroduce the theme of destiny as he admits that he recently had a tarot reading that led him to re-evaluate his past assumptions. Mae responds to this information by spontaneously quitting her job, realizing that she has let her fear of change lead to professional stagnation. As these personal decisions begin to drastically change her outlook on life, Benny gently suggests to her that the time loop’s real purpose might be “making the right choices because [she’s] finally being [her]” (128). Though Mae is bold and decisive with Andrew and now pursues their romantic bond without hesitation, she soon comes to doubt the permanence of this new connection, convinced that any hint of unhappiness could restart the time loop. These dynamics reveal that Mae is conflict avoidant—partly because her parents never modeled healthy disagreement during their own unhappy marriage—and this issue causes a harmful cycle of its own when Mae neglects to share her fears with Andrew. When Theo becomes angry at the revelation that she and Andrew are a couple, Mae does not immediately seek to resolve this conflict herself; instead, she chases a “magical” solution by begging Miles to hit her, hoping to trigger yet another reset of the time loop so that she will not be burdened with the task of solving her own problems. This moment stands as a desperate rejection of her own agency, and she vainly hopes that fate will spare her from having to confront unpleasant emotions or correct her own mistakes.
Andrew is similarly furious when he realizes that Mae never confessed her feelings to him until she realized that the time loop would free her of the consequences if something went wrong. Ultimately, Mae comes to accept her mother’s assurances that she is loved no matter what, and this innate support gives her the strength to realize the real purpose of the time loop: that she has the power to “[go] after what [she] want[s] without fear” (264). Accordingly, Mae’s grand gesture to Andrew is similarly fearless now that she finally trusts that embracing honesty will give new meaning to her life. In the Epilogue, Mae accepts Andrew’s proposal without hesitation, indicating that her earlier doubts about her own ability to direct her future are truly gone.
The Tension Between Childhood Nostalgia and Adult Responsibility
Christmas, for Mae, is a way to reconnect with her found family and bask in their age-old traditions, and she cherishes these times as a reminder of her childhood, especially in the aftermath of her parents’ divorce. However, the time loop forces her to consider the ways in which nostalgia and tradition may be holding her back from truly thriving. For Mae, embracing romance requires embracing adulthood more broadly and taking on a more mature sense of what holidays signify for everyone.
On her first version of the vacation, Mae sees her unfortunate romantic encounter with Theo as a response to the broader forces of peer pressure and familial assumptions. However, Mae realizes that Theo is still only interested in casual relationships. By contrast, Andrew begins the novel rejecting the idea that he should sleep in the basement as he did when he was a child, reasoning that “no one sleeping in the basement is actually a kid anymore” (5). Thus, right from the start, Andrew declares his adulthood and autonomy by sleeping in the Boathouse, however uncomfortable this arrangement might be.
The more often that Mae repeats the holiday, the more she comes to realize that she has struggled to leave her childhood behind. She tells Andrew that “[i]t’s time [they] all stepped up” to make the holiday logistics happen (118), rather than burdening his parents. Mae and Andrew’s first kiss occurs during a childhood game of sardines, but this time, they are playing with the young twins, Kennedy and Zachary, and must put their own romance aside once the children find them. This shift in dynamic doubly highlights the fact that Mae and Andrew must now embrace adult responsibilities and deal with one another on this more nuanced level. When they renew their connection while doing the dishes, this moment indicates that adult responsibility, rather than childhood naiveté, is the foundation of their budding romance.
Their conflict in the novel’s final chapters—the requisite “third-act breakup” that characterizes most romance plots—is partly rooted in Mae’s childhood and its emotional challenges, as evidenced by Mae’s rueful early reflection that “avoiding confrontation is probably the Jones family’s biggest vice” (9). Initially, Mae decides not to tell Andrew about the time loop because she is afraid of ruining their happiness together, but ironically, her reticence ultimately leads to the very outcome that she is trying to avoid. This dynamic indicates that her fear of tension is holding her back from finding true fulfillment, which can only come through resolving tension rather than ignoring it. Mae’s grand gesture to show her love for Andrew deepens this theme, as her choice to depict them as an elderly couple indicates her newfound resolution to cherish a lifetime of joy and shared challenges with him, rather than envisioning them only as carefree adolescents or as their current unencumbered selves. Ultimately, Mae’s drawing demonstrates that she no longer fears complex emotional responsibility. As they reconcile, Andrew assures her that she will “learn how to manage conflict” (289), and as Mae embraces a new degree of emotional vulnerability, she realizes that loving Andrew has allowed her to find the self-confidence that has long eluded her. This shift is explicitly acknowledged when she declares herself his girlfriend, despite her fears that the time loop might restart; in this moment, she decides that emotional authenticity is far more important than placating an unseen force.
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