It’s always good to see family and friends — and there’s a particular excitement in taking a trip home for the holidays when the skies and streets are full of other folk making their pilgrimages to see loved ones. For keen travellers, these can be some of our the memorable and cherished journeys (even with transport hubs at their most hectic and crowded). However, the fact remains that we can’t always make it back…
Like the old song says, if you’ve got the opportunity to go, there’s no place like home for the holidays.
As you may have read in some of my writing here on Resonate, I’m a native New Yorker, born and bred. Since childhood, I’ve loved walking through the holiday hubbub of late December in Manhattan.
Thousands of people pass, bundled against the frosty weather in colourful woollens. Festive lights glow everywhere, winking on at dusk atop skyscrapers and festooning the giant spruce at Rockefeller Center in their thousands. As I approach the huge twinkling tree from Fifth Avenue, skaters glide under a golden Prometheus, the charred smell of roasted chestnuts from a vendor’s cart sparks a memory, and for a moment I’m a six-year-old in the city again.
And perhaps more to the point, New York is also where most of my family still live. Though I’m extremely fortunate that at least one relative has always been able to visit me at least once a year — first in England, and later Ireland — living thousands of kilometres away I don’t get to see everyone often enough (and never all at once).
I suppose, as my mum insists, I really need to get back more! But life gets in the way and my holiday visits have been few and far between.
So odds are, we’ll be apart each year at this time.
Indeed, for those who are away often, the holidays can be a strange experience. On the one hand, it’s delightful to learn the new traditions of the place where you happen to find yourself during the festive period. While on the other, it’s hard to deny that there can still be the odd twinge of homesickness — even when you may have lived elsewhere for decades, as I have.
Expats or people who tend to be on the road — regardless of the season — know this all too well. More often than not, I have had surrogate families and new friends who ‘adopted’ me during these times, leading to some immersive crash courses in how things are done in my new home(s).
But despite travellers’ and transplants’ undeniable enjoyment of celebrating wherever we are, there’s the occasional sense that there’s a little something missing. Or perhaps a big something missing, if you’re on your own over the holidays without the camaraderie of company.
That makes this time of year ideal for reaching out to other people who may also be missing those near and dear to them. By creating a seasonal support system, we can get to know friends and neighbours better, building stronger bonds in our new environment that will carry us throughout the year.
Of course, when it comes down to it, home is not only one fixed place or location. It’s not a building or a set of map coordinates. It’s more of a feeling or state of mind; somewhere you can be yourself, where you’re most happy and fulfilled. Where the sights, sounds, smells and tastes all combine to wrap you in comfort and joy.
Here’s wishing you the best of exciting travels and new experiences, but also a chance to spend some time with those you care for, whatever the time of year. Whether that’s where you were born, or a new home far from it that fills you with contentment — if you’re like me, you’ll have learned it’s something to grab with both hands.
