It can be real strange, and just gets stranger when you lose ~all~ the anchors of the family. We lost all the matriarchs and patriarchs that really held the family together. My grandpa and mom, then grandma, then enough of the aunts and uncles that the rest of us cousins don't have much of a draw to each other. It's too far removed now. For a few years it really depressed me at Christmas, because I didn't have the personality or the 'gravitas' to pull the family back together again. In the past couple years, I have accepted that the past was nice, but I have to make the best of now, and not try to re-create what was.
That's what we've done. We make sure we see the relatives around the holidays, but we've established our own patterns, our own traditions. It's the way life goes on.
Heh. We started having family reunions a few years ago....when it was getting to be that the only time we saw each other was at funerals.