Christmas On The Road

Merry Christmas everyone!

For several months, the topic of Christmas on the road was a bit of a difficult one for me. It is my favorite holiday of the year and I usually start decorating our apartment in Munich in late November/ early December, to make it cozy and get into the spirit: I hang fairy lights on every conceivable object (the ones that line our bookshelves stay up all year round, for added comfort), I put out the hand-knit advent calendar I filled with little gifts for Adam, we get a small tree and last year we spent a full Saturday watching Christmas movies and crafting ornaments (only handmade ones are accepted). My Mama and I usually plan to bake 7 kinds of Christmas cookies on one of the Sundays before Christmas and every year it turns into a three day baking extravaganza, where we sing Christmas songs or listen to ABBA and eat pickles because we can’t take the sugar anymore.

Over the years, my family and I have woven countless traditions around this very special holiday and with Adam and his family, new ones were added (stockings for example, and Christmas movies or reading The Polar Express).
The quintessence of Christmas, to me, is spending time with our family and friends (be it in the States or Germany), making our home cozy and nurturing our many loving traditions.

These things are hard to do, if not impossible on the road. For a while, we really struggled with the decision of what to do for the holidays: should we spend it on a beach, with some kind of glorious lobster dinner? Or in a hostel, where we could make lots of new friends and celebrate with a joyous community?

In retrospect, I should have known the answer immediately: what counts is spending time with Adam (not some group of new friends we may or may not make), to build our own comfortable nest for a few days and snuggle up while watching Christmas movies. I was so stuck on thinking about all the things we are missing at home, I couldn’t make any decisions at all. But luckily, I am not on my own and Adam really took charge of the whole issue: he booked us a room in a snazzy hotel with an attached spa in Hanoi, got us a little plastic Christmas tree with blinky lights and found us some Christmas movies. We stocked up on snacks and let our backpacks rest for a while – Christmas is also a time to slow down and really appreciate your time together (though we did enjoy all the crazy Christmas decorations in the Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam). It’s quite cozy, really.

We wish you all a very merry Christmas and miss you loads – next year, we’ll celebrate together again and who knows, we may have added some new traditions from the road.