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"The assumption that single people have so much free time is truly in error," Peckman said. "No one is calling the insurance company to advocate for us during business hours. No one is helping mail out the holiday cards; no one is sharing meal preparation; no one is picking up groceries; no one is going to share the car with us for a week while ours is in a shop."
Peckman is not alone in her frustration. "Single people in some ways have more freedom, but they also have constraints that are rarely recognised. One of the biggest ones is financial," says Bella DePaulo, author of "Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After."
DePaulo notes that single people who live alone are paying for rent or mortgage, utilities and everything else out of one paycheck - while couples who live together often have two checks to cover one set of expenses.
The December holidays are hardly cheap for anyone.
But expenses can have a very different effect on the budget of a single person compared to someone who's married. TD Ameritrade's recent survey of 1000 married people and 1000 single people reported that, while 43 per cent of married individuals rate themselves as very financially secure, only 29 per cent of single Americans think they fit that description.
That disparity might be tied to the pay gap between married and single individuals. TD Ameritrade also found that single people are paid an average of $8,800 less per year than their married colleagues. While earning less money, unmarried people also face some higher expenses when it comes to housing, insurance and cellphone bills. Expenses that can be divided down the middle for couples.
Then there's the cost of trying to not be single. Pursuing romance is hardly cheap for men or women: According to a study from Match, in 2016 the average American shelled out almost $1,600 on their dating life.
Professional resources are scarce as well. When married parents leave the office, singles are often expected to work extra hours to make up the work under the assumption their schedules are more flexible.
That same assumption is seen in family dynamics. In Peckman's family, she often witnesses male relatives sending their wives to family functions as a family representative so the men can relax at home or keep working.
"While I do not have a spouse or children, I have to create the norm that I am not obligated to attend every family event during the holidays," Peckman says. "My time is as valuable as a working male cousin who cannot attend. My wishes for a certain religious service, where I like to relax during my precious time off work, must be as important as the married, or male, relatives of my age group."
If vacation time is granted, then comes the challenge of travel. Thanks to the common misconception that single people have so much freedom, they often find themselves expected to make the trip to the homes of married relatives, so larger families do not have to travel with their children.
But that freedom is actually less than perceived. "Something else other people don't always realise when they want single people to do the travelling is that single people might be missing out on other things going on in their lives, where they live," DePaulo said.
"When people with children say it is too hard to travel with them, so the single people without children should be doing the travelling, they are acknowledging what's inconvenient or difficult for them, with little appreciation for what's inconvenient or difficult for single people."
Joseph Larimore, a 34-year-old playwright says it's a myth that single people can do whatever they want. "We have to work. And if no one's there to help out with anything, we have to work really hard," he said.
And even if someone is able to throw clothes in a suitcase and jet off to the location of their choice, getting there is more expensive. If a family goes in together on a vacation package or cruise for the holidays, the "single supplement" - a surcharge often applied when solo travelers occupy a room - can raise the price for someone travelling alone. And if a single person manages to avoid hotel surcharges by staying at a family member's house, married people are often automatically given the private rooms while single people are relegated to sleeping on a couch or air mattress.
"For some single people . . . the expense of travelling to another person's place for the holidays might mean that they won't be able to afford vacation travel," DePaulo said. "In a way, that's a nice problem to have. For other singles, holiday travel expenses could cut into the budget for more basic expenses."
Second in holiday stress to travelling is gift-giving, another festive ritual that can be financially inequitable to single people. For every gift jointly given by a couple, a single person bears the entire cost and often only receives one gift in return. Family gift exchanges frequently come with the expectation that people without partners or children have the money to shop and spend freely - an expectation Peckman contradicts, saying: "Our income is not 'disposable' and no one is there to back us up if financial strife should come. [There's] no division or specialisation of labour. We do it all."
"I love my family, but I realise that creating one's own valuable traditions seems only permissible to the married," Peckman said. "It causes one to feel in a perpetual state of childhood, if single."
Her holidays now include attending religious services she finds more spiritually satisfying, as well as ringing in the new year with the folk-dancing community she has been a part of for several years. While her family has said they would like to see her more, Peckman remains confident in her decisions.
