It’s always good to see family and friends, but there’s a particular excitement in taking a trip home when the streets are full of other folk making a pilgrimage to see their own loved ones. For travellers, these can be some of our most memorable and cherished journeys, even with transport hubs at their most hectic and crowded. But the extra hustle and bustle of the holidays is worth it…
Like the old song says, if you’ve got the opportunity to go there, there’s no place like home for the holidays.
As you may have read in some of my articles here on Resonate, I’m a native New Yorker, born and bred. Since childhood, I’ve loved walking through the holiday hubbub that is 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 in England, and later Ireland, at least once a year, I don’t get to see everyone often enough (and never all at once). As my mum says, I need to get back home more! But my holiday visits have been few and far between.
So odds are, I’ll be elsewhere each year at this time.
Indeed, for those who travel often, or have moved away from close relatives and childhood friends, 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 been lucky to have 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’ 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.
And of course, when it comes down to it, home is not necessarily only one fixed place or location. It’s more of a feeling, somewhere you can be yourself, where you’re at your most happy and fulfilled. Here’s wishing you all of those things, and a chance to spend time with those you care for, in a place of comfort and warm familiarity, whatever the time of year. If you’re like me, you’ll have learned it’s something to grab with both hands!
