Home for the Holidays...

Christmas 2007

"Home for the holidays." This phrase is overused and misunderstood. This is something I shared with a dear friend, and I will share it here now because it seems apropos.

Home is not a physical street address. Home does not exist within the four walls where you shower & shave, eat meals, get your mail and feed your pets. Home is not simply the place where your daily life occurs. Although all those things are true in the basic sense, the true feeling of "home" encompasses so much more.

I struggle with the holidays because I don't feel "at home" when I visit my family. The house where we open gifts is not the home of my childhood. That place now belongs to some other family. But the cherished memories I have of Christmases past - decorating the tree with heirloom ornaments, setting the dinner table with our special Christmas china, feeling warm & fuzzy around the fireplace while gifts are exchanged and Mom's delicious food is eaten - all of those things took place in a house I can now only visit in my mind. My family's new home is theirs, not mine. I never lived there, so it lacks that Rockwell-esque nostalgic holiday aura.

Fortunately, I find that feeling in other places. I experience it when I'm drinking coffee with friends in their kitchen or sharing beers & dinner in their living room. I find it when I spend time with friends in my own house. Holiday decorations are never part of the equation. Neither are gifts. The most important ingredient required to create the recipe is simply - for lack of a better word - love. Love shared through fellowship creates that magical feeling that cannot be forced or duplicated in any other setting. When that feeling is present, you find peace and comfort. You find acceptance. You are known yet loved anyway. You can be yourself without having to worry about what others think about you. You can let your guard down and relax. You then feel at home in any location.

That is the best part of the holidays: being with people who love you and reciprocating the feeling. I don't know about you, but the time voluntarily spent with loved ones who aren't relatives is much better than required face time with relatives you really don't like all that much. (I'm not saying I dislike my relatives, per se, but hey, when you only see 'em twice a year without any communication in between, they obviously aren't on the Top 10 Persons List.)

So there ya have it. My two cents' worth on families & holidays. I expect change back.