I’ll be home for Christmas, you can plan on me
Please have snow and mistletoe …
My first experience with “Christmas away” nearly happened at the age of 20. Luckily, I made it home to Clarendon, New York from Boston, Massachusetts just before midnight on Christmas Eve.
The longing to be home for Christmas was strong. We had been in Boston for almost a year. I couldn’t wait to be home and enwrapped in all things familiar, including and maybe especially, Christmas traditions. I had hand stenciled the lyrics to I’ll Be Home for Christmas in a card to my parents as a promise to them and myself.
Originally recorded by Bing Crosby in 1943, the song was a tribute to soldiers far away from home during World War II. My pangs to be home for Christmas paled compared to the pangs felt by service members of any era. After all, I was safe and warm in a Boston apartment and could call home anytime (albeit via long distance on a land line). Still in 1982, being away for Christmas was not where I wanted to be.
Over the ensuing 34 years I’ve learned that “being away” for Christmas comes in many different forms…and that no one escapes. Whether it’s a death, military service, finances, a job, sharing with in-laws, a special vacation; none of us always makes it home for Christmas surrounded by everything and everyone that makes it home.
My brother’s 22-year career as a Marine Corps officer kept him away from home for many Christmases. In 1999, he brought his wife and one-year-old daughter to Clarendon for Christmas. It was the last time my parents and their three children would be home together for Christmas; we didn’t know it would be my mother’s last. As with most families, my mom was the core of Christmas – the keeper of traditions, the holiday organizer extraordinaire, the love light that gleams …. But perhaps, somehow we did know it would be the last – the pull to be home, to be together, was especially strong that year.
I don’t have a single friend who hasn’t had a Christmas away in some sense. Even people who choose to be away from home for the holidays admit to feeling the pull. Perhaps it’s an annualized circadian rhythm, that desire to nest at home with our loved ones at Christmas. It can’t only be guilt or a sense of obligation. I’m dreaming tonight of a place I love, even more than I usually do….
We’ve chosen to be away from home for Christmas twice in recent years in order to be with our far-flung children. I’d like to think that I’m their keeper of tradition, even when the traditions are taken on the road. I’d like to think that the nest I built for them is a source of comfort and strength. I’d like to think that they feel the pull of home for Christmas even when they choose to be away. I’ll be home for Christmas if only in my dreams….
Christmas began with a family away from home for Christmas. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to be home more than a young woman heavily pregnant with her first child. Maybe that’s part of the lesson of Christmas, that our desire to be home at this time is natural, eternal, even if not always possible. And although I know it’s a long road back, I promise you….
