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Christmas in Spain: At Home, or Far From Home??

This year we have been blessed to have Julie's sister, Amie, here during Christmas time, however, it's been a huge change celebrating holidays in Spain being so far from family. When I was growing up, because of having four parents and nine grandparents, Christmas meant LOTS of family, in LOTS of different places. This was great because it meant weeks full of time with loved ones, and a ton of gifts. Last year, on Christmas morning, Julie and I found ourselves in our quiet, small living room with Ellie, sharing an intimate and somewhat lonely time together.

The drastic change has caused me to think a lot about family, traditions, what's important about holidays (specifically Christmas) and how our family will lay down traditions that will carry on into the future. In the past, we've just kind of gone with flow, and hung on for ride with the rest of our families (which is all you can do in two weeks seeing so many people). These last two years, if we 'went with the flow', we probably wouldn't have ended up doing anything.

In the end, despite how much I have missed family over Christmas, I have really enjoyed the freedom to think about traditions (and tradition in general), start new traditions, end some and carry on others we have inherited from family. In the picture here we (plus Julie's sister Amie, our friend Dave Bryan, with his wife Beth taking the picture) are 'carrying on' the two year tradition of going over to our friends' (the Bryans) house for Christmas brunch. The Bryans have become family to us and we share a bond with them that we never would have had in the states with family near by.

I could write ten pages on all the things I have learned being far from 'home' during Christmas, but I won't. I'll simply say that our apartment here in Madrid has become more of a home for us than anywhere else we have lived. It's where the Lenockers are, and that's home. One thing I like about Spain is that even if you live in an apartment you can call it your house (casa). In the states, it's almost as if a place can't really be 'home' until you own a house. Madrid is where we have become a family together. This is home. We don't know what it's like to live as a family of three anywhere else. There are many times we long to be back in California, but there are many times when it scares us a bit to think about life there as a family. It just feels so unknown. The great thing, is that our house, our home, our family, will move with us wherever we go.