I’ll be home for Christmas…

Park City isn’t our home; only a small number can claim this casual, comely community as home. We are a town of transplants and tourists. Christmas is coming and our homes are far, far a way.
Home is often where we were raised and where our dear kindred dwell. Home is where we have a sense of belonging, ‘these are the people that love me.’
The few times my wife and I have spent a holiday away from home are unpleasant memories.
One year we decided to step out of the home on Christmas and spend some time together between being at my family home and her family home. We had hoped we could go to a restaurant on Christmas day and enjoy a pleasant meal alone. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find an open restaurant and we ended up buying a cheap, flavorless sandwich at a gas station and sitting in our car looking at Christmas lights outside a stranger’s home. There were tears. We were not at home.
One holiday, we decided to stay home and develop our own tradition as a young family. Our home felt empty and cold. Where was the laughter, jabbing, frantic kitchen activity, sweet smells, picture taking, complaining, interpersonal conflict, conversations, and the lines for the bathroom? Our weak attempt at developing own tradition and create a cushion between our home and the extended family wasn’t turning out like we thought. We missed belonging to an imperfect family. We missed being at home.
On the other hand, we can’t afford to fly back to Minnesota where most of our extended family homes are. We have driven back a couple of times, but that is a brutal business – traversing Wyoming, Nebraska, and South Dakota in late December makes as much sense as skiing naked in January. High winds, whiteouts, ice, below zero wind chills, and barren wastelands. One trip we ran out of gas due to a faulty fuel gauge, cold weather, high winds, and using a poor performing ethanol-gas mixture that they sell in the Mid-west. And we were far from home.
So this year, we are fearfully staying put in our home. We don’t want this Holy Day to be a downer for us and, especially, our two kids who are very fond of their cousins. So we are strategizing and making plans that will insure a meaningful Christmas.
We haven’t exchanged gifts as a family, we have been boycotting the frenzy of materialism for years, but this year we will break that tradition in an attempt to celebrate our Holy Day at home.
We are also getting together with close friends to create that sought after feeling of belonging – to be in someone’s home with people who care about us, to experience that home that we so need and long for.
“I’ll be home for Christmas if only in my dreams”.