Celebrating the Holidays Far From Home

We’ve entered that time of year when the hustle and bustle begins. Many of us are planning meals, whether to travel by car or plane, what we’ll pack in our luggage, and exactly what’s the best way to tackle a long-distance journey and maintain everyone’s sanity. Maybe, instead, you’re celebrating the holidays far from home.

For some of you, you may live too far away to conveniently travel the distance, or your finances aren’t in a place to support hotel stays, gas, or plane tickets, or you may have new additions to your family and prefer to celebrate in the quiet of your own home or in your own way. Maybe it’s a combination of all three.

Not everyone enjoys spending the holidays away from family—and for some of us, we feel a deep absence in our hearts. It isn’t the same when we aren’t “home.”

For the three years my family lived in Germany, we didn’t go home to the states. Not once. Most of our extended family wanted to travel when they visited, so everyone came to us. We were fortunate that no extenuating circumstances ever occurred. But that meant no Thanksgiving, Christmas morning, or Easter egg hunts with my family. It was time to celebrate the holidays in my own home, on my own.

If you’re celebrating far from home this year, know this: You are likely surrounded by a community who might feel the same. If you’re OCONUS, I can guarantee there are people who won’t be flying home.

This is your time to come together as a community. 

For those three years in Germany, every holiday was spent with my Army family.

I have fond memories of crowding around my dining room table, barely enough room for all the mismatched plates, silverware, and drinkware; a card table situated at the end to expand where my usual table couldn’t; regular chairs, camping chairs, folding chairs, set up tight against each other; and all of us crowded around, elbows, knees, and feet constantly bumping; platters, trays, and bowls of food relegated to the kitchen to save room, but the weight of all the fare might as well have been bowing the countertops; food that came from the traditions of people scattered throughout the United States—black eyed peas or pork and sauerkraut on New Year’s Eve, pumpkin whoopie pies or homemade apple pie for Thanksgiving dessert, family cookie recipes shared on Christmas Eve.

Our tables were made up of families, couples who didn’t want to travel home after arriving only six months prior, single soldiers who had the choice of our house or the DFAC, family pets who couldn’t be left home too long, and friends and neighbors who simply didn’t want to cook for just themselves.

Every year for three years, someone offered my family a place or we offered others a warm home to come together as a community, to eat, talk, laugh, and celebrate. 

Dear reader, I know FaceTime just isn’t the same. I know it can be hard living overseas, so far away. I know it can feel lonely to celebrate so far from home, where you’re the sole person to carry on your family’s traditions. But know that you have so many wonderful people at your fingertips. Let them fill that void for now. Let them lift you up. Share your traditions with them, maybe incorporate their traditions next year.

Let your friends and neighbors become your military family. Let them become the family you choose, rather than the one into which you were born. Remember that these people aren’t just anyone—they’re your tribe.

I know it isn’t the same as being surrounded by the extended family who loves you. But you might be surprised at how your home or your friends’ homes are bursting at the seams with a love of its own. A few years from now, you’ll look back on these memories, not with sadness, but with joy.

And you might even miss it.