I Won't be Home for Christmas

Source

 

If you’ve been reading my blog for the past month or so, you’ll know that I just recently moved to a different state. Since I relocated from Maine to Virginia, travel back and forth can be an interesting affair. Plane tickets, especially last-minute ones, tend to be expensive, and driving there and back presents a significant time investment. Not to mention the fact that my sister (who I live with now) has to work on Christmas Eve. So, all that to say, I won’t be going home this time around.

This will be the first year either of us has been away for Christmas, and it will take some adjusting. Of course, we will try to maintain some of our traditions, like binge-watching Doctor Who and waking up to goody-stuffed stockings. We will make wassail and buy sparkling grape juice (and we’ll cross out the “non” on the label where it says “non-alcoholic” because yeah, we live on the edge like that). A couple weeks ago my sister bought a Christmas tree and brought it back strapped to the top of my little Ford Focus, and now it graces our kitchen with its loveliness (the tree, not the car). So we’re doing all right.

But in case you were wondering, Virginia is not Maine. It’s not really anything like Maine. It has different grocery stores and different restaurants and different people. Maine is rather rural, and the county where I spent most of my childhood is known for being one of the poorest counties in the US. Now I live near the richest county in the country, so saying things are different here would be a bit of an understatement. In Maine, winter has always been a snowy affair. Last year was especially bad, and the snowbanks at the ends of the driveway got to be taller than me (I’m almost 5’7”). It felt like I spent more time shoveling than breathing. Here, though, the prospects of having a white Christmas are next to nil.

So yes, Christmas here will not be the same as Christmas there. I will miss the magical feeling of looking out the window of my cousins’ house and seeing, yet again, all those fluffy snowflakes floating down to kiss the earth on Christmas day. I will miss the sugar cookies my aunt usually makes and the grand selection of pies in the pantry. I will miss watching It’s a Wonderful Life on Christmas Eve with my cousins, and I will miss waking up early and sneaking downstairs with those same cousins to open our stockings in the dark even though none of us are little children anymore. I will miss the people.

This year the two of us will have to forge our own Christmas path. It will be much quieter here, since even my sister’s college friends will be home spending the holiday with their families. We’ll have to occupy ourselves some other way. We could take a walk among the trees around our cul-de-sac and pretend the branches are laden with snow instead of deer ticks. We could make imaginary snow men. We could even throw pieces of store-bought ice at each other and pretend we’re having a snowball fight. The possibilities are endless.

Either way, we’ll be okay. True, we’ll end up missing out on what the rest of our family is doing, and sure, it will be rather quiet here. But my sister and I haven’t forgotten the main reason why we celebrate Christmas in the first place. More than family and presents, Christmas is about gratitude—it’s about celebrating the fact that Jesus came to earth to pay the ultimate price for our sins. And I can’t be lonely when I’m thinking about that sort of love.  

What about you, little coffee beans? What are your plans for this Christmas?