Christmas Away From Home

Christmas means something different to each person, how it was celebrated when they were younger and how it’s remembered as they’re older. While I listened to my friend recount what Christmas was to him, I thought to myself, “that’s nothing like mine was.” For most of my English friends, Christmas Eve is bottles of ale at bars with friends and family, to me it’s with family but at my house or theirs. I couldn’t imagine it any other way.

I’ve always loved Christmas, when I younger it was the feeling of sneaking down the stairs in the middle of the night to look at the presents under the tree, as I got older it was about picking out the perfect Christmas tree with my dad/and family and figuring out how we could put more lights on the house the next year. It always bothered me we couldn’t put lights on the second-story roof. I always thought to myself that when I looked for a house in the future, it’s Christmas light potential was an important factor.

Christmas in a country where it’s not celebrated makes being away from home during December difficult; working on Christmas Eve, having Christmas day off and then working the day after is depressing while your family is spending time together. The past two years my friends and I rented a house for the weekend before Christmas. My first year Christmas fell on a Monday so we were together for Christmas Eve and then left Christmas Day; last year I was with my girlfriend at the time on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. This year we didn’t rent a house because a lot of my friends left Korea so we had Christmas Day at mine. On Christmas Eve three of my friends came over after school, we ate pizza, drank and watched Home Alone. Christmas Day we had a late lunch, everyone brought or made something. We did a secret Santa and I received the Jim Beam and two whiskey classes with the map of New York etched onto them. Later the night at around 10:30pm when all my friends had left I facetimed with family as they were just getting up on Christmas day. They had sent me a package and I wanted to open it with them and I had sent them a gift and wanted to watch them open it. Christmas away from home isn’t easy, any holiday away from home is difficult, but having a good group of friends makes it a lot easier.