I'll Be Home for Christmas

I guess 'home' could have two main definitions for me - home with Mr. in New York or home where I grew up in the Midwest - and being 'home for Christmas' could refer to the actual day or the days surrounding in celebration of the holiday.

Either way, the statement pretty much stands. Since Mr. gets Christmas Day (and only Christmas Day) off during his next rotation, I'm going to spend Christmas Eve and Day in the city and then fly back to the Midwest on the 26th for 8 days in my hometown (which only requires taking 19 hours of my vacation time. woot.).

While I'm a little bummed I'll miss the Christmas Eve service at my small hometown church (and subsequent mini-reunion with the kids I went to Sunday school with who have also left town), I am very curious and excited about the service at my church in the city. Everything is bigger here, and Easter is fabulous across the city as the one day a year New Yorkers go to church. At a church I attended on Fifth Avenue for a few months on a particularly ritzy corner of Manhattan, families would line up around the blocck for the 11 o'clock service, dressed in their finest, few without a fancy hat.

Though my current church is still in a nicer Manhattan neighborhood, we don't have lines outside to get in on Easter Sunday. Most of our members visit family during that time. So I'm curious to see the balance on Chirstmas - will most people be out in the 'burbs celebrating with non-city family? Or will there be droves of C&E Christians popping in on one of the two days a year they go to church?

Regardless, this city is also magnificant at Christmastime. Shopping is a nightmare, of course, but everything is so pretty. There are decorations in every nook and cranny you can find. Filled with holiday spirit and those holiday bonuses, New Yorkers are even more generous than usual. It's a splendid time of year.

Enough about Christmas in NYC, though, and back to the real point of this post. Holiday plans tend to be tricky in most families. It's a time for extended families to gather, but families extend in multiple directions. Who do you see and where and when? In fact, I think there's a movie coming out this winter with Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn based in part on this concept.

Last year, when Mr. was an MS2, we went to his parents' for Thanksgiving and mine for Christmas. We were going to switch this year, but the schedule doesn't allow for it. He has a week off the first week of December, but I still have class, and he'll probably use that time to shadow surgeons/network/breathe.

Luckily both sets of parents are awesome and always totally willing to work with our schedules. So when I ask my parents if I can come the day after Christmas, they're totally fine with it and will pick me up from the airport!

Now I'm just hoping my friends from high school (none of whom live in our hometown anymore, but all of whom will drive back for the holidays) will be around after Christmas this year. Last year they were all around prior to Christmas and left Christmas Day or the day after, but I'm hoping since it's on a Thursday this year instead of a Tuesday, they'll be around for the weekend.

It should be interesting to see how holidays are moving forward. I imagine Mr. will usually be working. Pre-kids I'll probably enjoy this as it means I get to go to my parents (not that I don't love the in-laws, but they're not my parents) every Christmas. Once we have kids, though, I'm not sure how we'll adjust. I imagine we'll be hosting. Since I love hosting and only have one sibling who doesn't love hosting, I think it will work out pretty well. That's a long trip down the road, though.