Home for the Holidays

I was standing in the checkout line at my local grocery store when the dulcet tones of Perry Como came through the speakers with the popular Christmas song, Home for the Holidays.

By the end of the first line, I realized I was singing along with Perry; I had the lyrics memorized.

The next second I found myself wondering, where exactly was my home for the holidays? Does that song mean it doesn't feel like Christmas if we are not home?

If I had to sing the song within the context of my life, it would be strange because home means very different things to me.

I spent most of my childhood Christmases in the Sultanate of Oman, where I grew up. We always attended the watch night service (watch night Mass) at 11:30 pm. After that, we usually had a light dinner, napped till 9 pm, dressed in our Christmas finery, and headed to church. It was always fun to attend church with all our friends. We were all immigrants in Oman, so our friends were our family. Church ended around 1 am, and everyone was served a cup of coffee and a slice of fruit cake. But the best part came after!

As my father and several other family friends drove home, we would all stop mid-way at a local convenience store. It was the only store that stayed open for gas & other sundries on Christmas Eve. But it was not just a convenience store. They made the most amazing burgers! So, after every Christmas service, we all stopped there and had fresh burgers and fries! Unfortunately, they had no indoor seating, so we usually stood around our cars, the kids sitting on the hoods, and wolfed down that hot, delicious meal. It was the highlight of our evening!

The next day we woke up, visited friends, and often had a communal meal in someone's home. It was a pot-luck-style meal where everyone lingered for a long. Sometimes people had to pop into work for a few hours since we lived in an Islamic nation and Christmas was not a national holiday. So we usually gathered at another friend's home for dinner, and around 8 pm, the day would end. We never made presents or gifts the highlight of Christmas. It was always people and family-style meals.

A handful of times, my parents returned to India to celebrate Christmas with my grandparents and extended family. I always felt like a stranger every single time. My cousins’ traditions and their yearly activities seemed unfamiliar to me. We attended a similar 11:30 pm service because nearly all churches in India have them. But there, the similarity ended. Everyone went home right after church. In the morning, families and cousins met and shared cake, sweets, and savory Christmas treats. We usually had Christmas lunch at home and, in the evening, went to visit family and friends.

The difference I always saw between my Christmases in Oman and India was that one was always communal and included a larger circle of friends. The other was very family oriented. Don't get me wrong, people have big families, but it never included outsiders or friends. Everyone was genetically related. So, it felt different and not quite home for the holidays.

But my life changed when I got married. My first Christmas as a new bride was with my husband's family. Furthermore, it was a novel experience and a slightly awkward one. Their family attended Christmas services at 3 am! Yes, that is a thing in India. So none of us got much sleep on December 24th.

As a new bride, I was expected to dress in my finest silk saree with a lot of jewels, so I found myself at 1 am standing in front of my mother-in-law getting a saree draped.

In South Indian churches, the men and women sit separately, so on our first Christmas as a couple, I saw a bunch of strangers, and my husband was nowhere near me. Indian churches get very crowded during Christmas, so we also have seating outside the church. For all I know, he could have been outside on a bench. So, no, it did not feel like being home for the holidays.

The following year, my husband and I celebrated Christmas apart because I had gone to Oman to be with my parents before having our first baby. I was pregnant, and he was unable to join us. While the memories of being in Oman were strangely comforting, and I remembered those childhood days of convenience store burgers, Oman no longer felt like home. He was not there to share the season, and I felt like a stranger, even with my parents.

Over the last 18 years, we have celebrated most of our Christmases here in Dallas, Texas, and it has become home for us. We have built memories for our children and created tradition for them. But after two years of not seeing our parents in India, we visited them in 2021 for Christmas. Being back in an unfamiliar church, a language I was not fluent in, felt strange. We wanted to be with our parents, who were getting older, but it did not feel like home.

I wanted what was familiar, routine, and traditional. Our children missed Christmas presents, cookies, the dinner I usually made for our family, and the memories we had created with our friends and church community in Dallas. It did not feel the same.

As I stood in church on December 25th, 2021, I realized what home has meant to me has changed over the years. As a child who grew up as an immigrant, my family created traditions that worked for them; I felt like an immigrant in India for the few years I lived there, and then I became an immigrant in the United States. As a result, I have always felt displaced and somewhat of a stranger everywhere I have lived.

So, no offense to Al Stillman (author of Home for the Holidays), but I don't quite agree that there is no place like home for the holidays. I have roamed far away from my country of origin, and home is where the heart is. We don't always have the luxury of being with our loved ones every Christmas. We don't always get to do exactly what we want for Christmas. But the message of Christmas is the same whether we are seated around our dining table with our family, if we are in a makeshift tent as a refugee who has fled from a war-torn nation, or if we are immigrants having a multicultural meal in a small apartment in a foreign land, or if we are warming up pizza or a microwave dinner and spending the day alone.

The song creates an illusion of an idyllic life where everything in our world seems right when we go home. But home might not be safe for some, the home might be heartache for others, and some may never know where their house ever was.

If you find yourself safe and warm this season in a loving home, I encourage you to open your home and heart to those who desperately need one. Find creative ways to serve others and perhaps even find inconvenient ways to serve. Sometimes the greatest blessings come from the most uncomfortable situations. Break away from what your family counts as tradition and do something different. Maybe take that Christmas present budget and use it to serve a charity. Invite the new family to the church home for a Christmas meal and ask them to bring their traditional dish. There are many ways we could all bless others and be blessed in return.

As someone who has experienced the strangeness and awkwardness of Christmases past in other places, I have started to hold tradition loosely. I still want to give my family traditions, but I also want to try to be open to new experiences. Of course, I struggle when things don't go my way, but trying new experiences and building new traditions refine my faith.

Last year, I mentioned we celebrated Christmas in India with our family. I stood in an unfamiliar church, where the songs and lessons were read in a language I could not comprehend. Yet, I was aware that I was celebrating the birth of the Lord with fellow believers, and despite the selfishness of my heart, I was still able to worship and delight in the birth of our Saviour. I was part of the global church and the body of Christ, and it gladdened my heart to see others sing and celebrate! It might not have been precisely what I wanted, but it was what I needed.

There is no place like home for the holidays, but you do not have to be at home for it to feel like Christmas. You do not have to stick to tradition year after year for it to feel like Christmas. We can live with open hands, willing to try new experiences and learn from them.

Too often, our faith can run the risk of running stagnant through the traditions we hold dear. But when we allow ourselves to be inconvenienced, we often discover how much we have onto our ways which hinder

s us from new experiences and the opportunity to grow. By living in a way that challenges us and getting outside our comfort zone, our faith grows, we learn from others, and we lay our desires down. It is always an opportunity for growth, but only if we lean into it.

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