Are you back 'home' for Christmas?

[DamnCommandments]

We're staying put and not going back to the UK. I'm glad to miss the Christmas time travel nightmare, packing up all the kids' presents, negotiating who we see and when, and the inevitable guilt when we miss people. I'm still feeling jealous of my friends who are heading 'home', though. I think it's partly just the break from our new normal that I'm craving. And I haven't been back since May. Anyone else?

We are staying put but we only came out in August. Mil is arriving tomorrow for two weeks, spent day cleaning house from top to bottom, Costco tomorrow then trip out to airport. Happy not be travelling as well, though there are people I would like to see. I do miss UK food though.

Nope, and not really sad about it either.
Having said that this is my 11th Christmas abroad and I have my own family, friends and traditions.

The thought of the cold dark British Christmas where everyone is stressed, sick and rushing about fills me with the fear

I should be at home this year .... but decided to go back in August instead. Roll on 2 weeks of laying by the pool !!

This is our fourth Christmas here (other side of the world) and though we went back for Easter this year, we've never returned for Christmas. Facebook photos make me feel homesick at this time of year so I've learnt to avoid it and focus on the fact that summer is coming here! We might go back next year though when DD will be old enough to understand the occasion a bit more.

Never had a Christmas at home. But let ok’ing forward to hopefully doing so in the next few years. Would love a proper Christmas with family and friends again instead of boiling to death with a Christmas hat on!

Nope. Haven't been back home to UK in 3 and a half years due to circumstances.
Am heavily pregnant now and really wish I was home right now.

We are in the UK but DSIS usually comes to stay with us with her now DH and her DD for 2 weeks.

Very much looking forward to going to the in-laws tomorrow and not having to tidy the house top to bottom, doing an endless Christmas shop or having them under my feet for 2 weeks.

DSIS has been promoted this year which means she is only coming to visit on the 30th and is going home on the 2nd- and as it's such a short trip, has booked to stay in a hotel.

So once I can enjoy the company of my DSIS and DN without the added expense or responsbility. I cant wait!

I've been back to the UK at Christmas once in 16 years - I said never again. I was single and no kids. Christmas day was over all my friends and family went back to work. I was sat on a stinkling damp train,miserable lonely and fighting flu. A friend from here called to ask me to go skiing with a group for a few days (in my adopted country). I was so mad to be stuck in the uk. . ... this year we have no plans at all - just us and the kids. That's OK. Maybe I miss my brothers, sisters,their kids.... juSt a little though.

The weather here ia awesome at Christmas time. There is no way in a million years i would go home to damp freezing winter.

We never go home at Christmas but my dad is seriously ill and this will be his last I expect (although he's at home and seemingly well albeit tired at the moment).

First time back to the UK for Xmas in 9 years, flying to Manchester on Xmas eve, driving 6 hours to SE, then 9 up to Scotland and 5 back to Manchester for a flight home, all in 12 days. Was the most cost effective way to do it (booked last minute), not looking forward to packing all the stocking fillers (dcs are 9 and 13), jet lag, cold, runny noses, wearing thick coats, grey skies and dark afternoons....

We are the other side of the world to family. I am missing them so much. We moved in the summer so can't go back just yet although we plan to visit next summer. The plus sides are a properly mega white Christmas for the dc and we are going skiing this weekend. Down sides are missing family.

We go back tomorrow. We’d hoped to stay here to avoid the running around, dark, damp etc and just enjoy it the 4 of us in our new home/country (we just moved here this year). It’s dark and cold here but there is snow and skiing and ice skating and beautiful views and scenery so we would’ve happily stayed.

But like @bradleypooper this is likely to be my dads last Christmas so we will go to the UK and will be happy to see friends and family, given the circumstances.

Hugs to you bradley hope you have special time with your family. I’m dreading it (due to the emotions/sadness) and looking forward to it all at once.

I'm flying home on the 27th. So here for Christmas, but in the UK for New Year. Only the second time in the 24 years I've been away. Mainly prompted by the fact that the in-laws are here, so I'm leaving OH to it.

Nope. Staying put. We were back for a wedding in late October, so it doesn’t make any sense to fly over again 2 months later.

I’m sad to miss out on seeing my friends, but not sad to avoid JFK and Heathrow a few days before Christmas.

I am home. What do people mean when they say "going Home"? Do they mean the country, or the house (we sold our UK house 10.5 years ago) you used to live in? Or your parents, whom you haven't lived with for 25 years...

I am always irrationally irritated by people suggesting my home is not the house I've lived in with my husband and children for ten years and brought two of my children home to as newborns, but rather my parents' house, which I also only lived in for ten years (and less really as I went to boarding school) and haven't spent more than a ten day stretch in since the early 1990s...

sorry, it's a bugbear

I also refuse to drag kids through airports on 23rd December in order to sleep in a makeshift uncomfortable location and be blackmailed into attending multiple church services, and have found the fact our schools never break up until a day or two before Christmas Eve very useful :o

Evelynismyspyname - exactly

Well this thread obviously does not apply to yourself then Evelyn if you consider yourself to be at home where you are.

We are back for the first time since we left 18 months ago. We are staying with the in-laws but is still very much feels like we are ‘home’. Like this is real life, and it’s all just here waiting for us for when we come back for good.

I think I will find it hard when we go back in January.

Staying in the States this Christmas. I'm starting to fell REALLY homesick and miss everyone as I've not been back for a year but then spoke to my Mum the other day and she was a mean, vicious bitch as she sometimes can be so in a way I'm glad I'm here.

Also glad we don't have to spend a fuck ton of money, face grief for not seeing everyone and worry about ds behaving so my family like him.

Staying where we are (ME) for lots of reasons - cost of travel at this time of year, no 'home' to return to as we have broken families, parents don't have space, don't want to travel with two very small children. Not keen on the cold, not keen on exposure to winter bugs. I see where Evelyn is coming from - people here always ask repeatedly at this time of year if we are going 'home' but the concept of home is sometimes hard to define. I do feel nostalgic for Christmas in the cold but the rose tinted memories from long ago are pretty hard to live up to. In the one time we did go back it was all grim weather, dealing with difficult family and fighting off the inevitable travellers' cold for the whole visit. I'd rather use my annual leave for holidays at a different time of year when the pressure is off!
Here, we have friends coming over with similar age children. We are having a turkey takeaway and all the trimmings from a local hotel (perks of being in the Middle East!) and relaxing in the garden in the mid 20's gorgeous weather.
But - I have to confess, I do really miss U.K. Christmas food, TV adverts and crisp winter walks around beautiful NT properties on those rare amazing dry bright winter days. That's what I feel a tad envious of when friends go home at this time of year.

Ha, yes, yippyyappy, if I had to see my parents while we were here, I’d feel a lot differently about coming back. As it is, I am seeing good friends and spending time with DH’s lovely family and none of it feels like a hardship.

To Evelyn, ‘home’ isn’t the house we still own in the UK, it’s the people, the landscape, all the things that I know and understand. Even the damp drizzly weather feels comfortingly familiar after spending 18 months sweating and avoiding the sun.

Obviously, as a pp mentioned, none of this applies to you. Do people in your life who know your circumstances still expect you to call the UK (or wherever) home? Are you going to stay where you are now permanently?

I see where Evelyn is coming from - people here always ask repeatedly at this time of year if we are going 'home'

I can see how this would get annoying. I have generally asked people if they are going away, or maybe if I know they regularly go back, if they are ‘going to the UK’. I wouldn’t assume they were going ‘home’.

owt and Return my mum still says it. I actively asked her not to multiple times, as it really grates, I really find it infantilising and patronising tbh. Other UK acquaintances (tbh mainly friends of my parents and people I'm not really in touch with except chance meetings in the UK or Facebook contact) say it and of course I don't say anything. Friends from the UK don't say it as unlike family they actually process what's said in conversation and realise that home is where my life is.

People in my life here don't say it, no, though some ask if I'm going to go to my parents. I am not part of any expat circles but have lots of eastern European friends met through work and study, who have also moved here for good but have aging parents in their country of origin so understand the pressure and also have old acquaintances who do the "home" thing.

My friends live in a totally different part of the UK to my parents for the most part, which means no one part of the UK is home and seeing everyone in one trip is not really an option - I tried it when we first moved and it was stressful and unsatisfactory. I imagine this is true for a lot of mobile people - not many people move abroad straight from having lived in their hometown and nowhere else all their lives any more. It means no part of the UK is "home".

Yes, I'm staying here probably, at least until the kids leave home, unless something unforseen happens and we have to move to keep an income coming in or whatever. We're in Europe so the seasons are more pleasing and defined than the UK - warmer summers, snowier winters. Brexit prompted me to get citizenship, otherwise I wouldn't have felt a need; I suppose that solidified things...

I suppose you're right - this is mainly an expat thread not a broad living overseas thread. It annoys me personally to have my life reduced to an interlude with the expectation that it has to come to an end, that seems to me to be packaged up with the idea that others get to tell you that you're not at home in your home, but only in your parents' home town or the country of your birth (which is different for one of my kids to the other two, incidentally).

All of my friends are in London, half family in Wales and half in West Country so I spend most of the time travelling.

I really miss mince pies, tv and twiglets.

Bloody hell, Evelyn! I put the inverted commas around it for a reason...!