When You’re No Place Like Home For the Holidays

For the first time in my life, I know with complete certainty that I won’t be having a White Christmas. This afternoon I walked to a flower market, planted some new petunias on my balcony and then headed into the kitchen to bake Christmas cookies. Here in the Southern hemisphere it is full on summertime, and my brain still can’t still seem to process the fact that it can simultaneously be pool season and the holiday season.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining about the longer days and warmer temperatures. I will take summer over winter (almost) any day of the year. But, all my life, Christmas meant winter, and so something inside me feels like it short circuits every time I walk into the mall and see flip flops being sold across the aisle from Christmas trees.

But, of course, the real magic of this season has nothing to do with the weather. And it’s not the real culprit behind my complicated feelings about the holidays this year.

This year, for the first time ever, I’ll be spending Christmas away from my family. Maybe I am naive not to have anticipated that this would happen sooner or later. As we grow older and life becomes more and more complex, it’s inevitable that our traditions will change. But still, even at 29, I find myself feeling a little lost without the traditions of my childhood to cling to.

Christmas has always been the same.

On Christmas Eve, we get dressed up, pull on our coats and scarves and make our way to church. As we pull up, my dad offers to drop us off at the door. We tell him we can walk, but he insists. We check our coats and settle into our pews. College students, home for the holidays, take turns reading through one of 6 bible lessons from the gospels. When I was young, they seemed so old and mature. In recent years, I marveled at how young they looked. Afterwards, we enjoy cookies in the atrium before heading home to open one early present.

On Christmas morning, we have coffee, listen to Christmas music and open our presents. We then pack up our car, and make the drive 3 hours west to see my mom’s family in Illinois. We repeat the present opening ritual with them. It’s the same, but more chaotic. We eat lots of cookies and play some games. That is what Christmas is. That is what Christmas has always been.

Until this year.

I will admit, when December rolled around I was a little dramatic. I launched into a grieving process of sorts.

I started with denial. It was 85 degrees outside, no one was putting up Christmas lights. Why not just ignore the holidays altogether?

That worked for a few days, but social media wouldn’t let me off the hook that easily. I felt angry and sad as I was confronted with an endless onslaught of photos of friends decorating their Christmas trees, baking Christmas cookies and playing in the snow. I pouted. I looked up flights. I scowled like the Grinch at the hoards of holiday shoppers I encountered when I finally decided it was time to buy a tiny Christmas tree for our apartment.

This was all wrong! But it wasn’t. I was.

I realized, after a day of pouting, that I was feeling guilty. You were supposed to be home for the holidays, and I wasn’t going to be. I was turning my back on what always had been, and to embrace new traditions felt sort of like a betrayal.

Yes, I’m sad that I won’t be with my family on Christmas day. I will miss them. But missing my family and enjoying the holidays don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Starting a new tradition doesn’t mean that I am spitting in the face of my old ones, it simply means that I’m adapting them to fit my new circumstances.

Yes, there is no place quite like home for the holidays, but as we grow older and spread our wings, we might have to expand our definition of what home looks like. This year, Christmas will be sunny. Matt and I will spend Christmas Eve driving back from wine country. We’ll go to church in our living room, streaming in a service from our church in Cincinnati. On Christmas morning, we’ll make breakfast and open the few presents we have stashed under our tiny tree. We’ll sit on our patio and watch the chaos that is my family’s Christmas through a screen.

It won’t be the same, but it will still be special. And, I have to admit, I’m finally looking forward to it.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all!  No matter where you find yourself, this holiday season, I hope you find a way to bring a little bit of home and a lot of joy to your celebration.