Home for the Holidays... Yeah Right

Every year apparently it seems there's a Christmas song I can't listen to. Last year, since I was newly single, I remember going caroling with my housemates. We were trying to come up with a song and someone suggested either "All I Want For Christmas Is You" or "Last Christmas I Gave You My Heart". I vetoed it. My dear but oblivious housemates didn't understand until I adamantly refused and said, "Guys. Seriously. Think about it." On a broken heart, I just couldn't do it. Those songs would have made me cry.

This year, cleaning up the kitchen and listening to the Pandora Christmas station. What song comes on...

(Source: My Own.)

Talk about depressing. This year, the holidays will be spent 4000 miles away from home. With a family who I've grown to love but who still aren't mine. This is just a temporary home. One that has changed me and that will always stay in my heart but it's still going to be incredibly strange that I'm not spending Christmas morning throwing balls of wrapping paper in the corner of our living room, making blueberry muffins with my family, and arguing over whose DVD we'll watch first. There might be a cherry cheesecake but if so it'll be made as a concession to me. (Well honestly even back in America this year it would have been.) 

Please don't get me wrong. I love this opportunity and I'm very glad to be able to make these memories. How many years do you get to live on another continent? How many years do you spend Christmas with three little children and see the wonder in their eyes? Or get to be in Paris for that case? I'm going to enjoy every moment of this. I'm going to savour the minutes that I walk around Paris in the snow, that I sip hot cocoa in Berlin, that I bake cookies with the girls. 

But I'm also going to cry when I get done Skyping into the family Christmas party. I'm going to miss it, even if the way it's changed since I was little means it rarely feels like a Christmas party anymore. But this was supposed to be the year I hosted Christmas. It's finally at a home this year instead of in a park shelter. Maybe this year would feel like Christmas again. But instead, my bedroom is probably as decorated as it's going to get. I've got Christmas lights up. That's it. There's no nativity set. There's no ABCFamily to play Christmas specials so I'm finding them online. 

This is going to be one weird Christmas. And I'll be avoiding that song this year...