Did You Spend The Holidays With Your Real Family or Your "Single" Family?

Increasing numbers of single adults are choosing to spend the holidays with their friends, rather than travel home to hang out with their actual family. According to The Boston Globe, more than 40 percent of unmarried Americans say they're just fine not visiting biological relatives during the holidays. Basically, we'd all rather be on Friends than The Cosby Show.

Some of the reasons include the expense of traveling, the ability to stay in touch over the Web or Skype, convenience, loneliness — but most of all it's that our friends don't stress us out the way relatives do. You can pick your friends, but you can't pick your family. And we generally prefer to spend time with the people we chose ourselves. Says one single guy:

The longer I’ve lived away from family, the more accustomed I’ve grown to living away from my family. And I’ve replaced them! I have a family kind of group around me - my dudes; my former roommate, who’s like a brother to me; the other guys I cut hair with. If I want to watch a movie or I’m having a celebration, who do I call? Them.’’

When you spend more time with your bros than you're relatives, it's easier to become attached them. Once you have kids, of course, all that changes since new parents often want their children to experience the same childhood memories they had. And kids are a great buffer between you and those annoying relatives ... who are constantly asking when you're going to have more kids.

Although, even those with kids can appreciate the benefits of a nice "staycation." Navigating an airport on the day before Thanksgiving, so that you can be even more aggravated by your parents? Who wants to sign up for that?