{"id":5763,"date":"2022-12-26T20:35:53","date_gmt":"2022-12-26T19:35:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=5763"},"modified":"2022-12-26T20:35:55","modified_gmt":"2022-12-26T19:35:55","slug":"here-home-for-the-holidays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=5763","title":{"rendered":"Here Home for the Holidays"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

By Thanksgiving, I had said it probably 25 times, in almost exactly the same sentence structure, with the same subordinate additions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Nah, I\u2019m staying here for Christmas this year, you know, it\u2019s great to get home \u2013 Langhorne home \u2013 for Christmas, but yeah my parents and I basically agreed that I\u2019d come home every other year. Last year was a pain, cancelled flights, COVID tests, all that, it\u2019ll be nice to have a nice relaxing Christmas.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I sounded like someone rationalizing a failing, a lost job, a recent breakup in which they had not been the victor. I sounded like someone doling out big portions of overcompensation. But it\u2019s true, I was looking forward to a nice quiet Christmas at home. Here home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since we were both staying in Prague, Burke and I decided to make our here home Christmas a big happy event. We decided on a big tree, in her words \u2018taller than me\u2019, which I pointed out wasn\u2019t the achievement it might sound like. We came up a menu of American side dishes \u2013 mac and cheese, mashed potatoes, pineapple souffle, stuffing \u2013 to cozy up to a main dish to be named later. Since it was just us for Christmas, we would get lots of gifts for each other and the pets (though I didn\u2019t wrap the pets\u2019 gifts too well, the dog has trouble pulling strings and the cat just doesn\u2019t appreciate the effort). Here home Christmas was on!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I hauled the taller than me tree for a mile and half through the season\u2019s only snowstorm. I carried it on my shoulders and in front of me in two arms as if it was a wrapped bundle. Each week I pitched a new main dish: ham, turkey, a roast chicken, lasagna. Every one of which was met with a half-hearted \u2018okay\u2019 which meant \u2018no\u2019. At least once a day I\u2019d say to someone, \u2018I can\u2019t tell you how happy I am that I don\u2019t have to fly across the world in December.\u2019 They\u2019d look at me in wonder and I\u2019d continue. \u2018Going to be a relaxed, chilled out Christmas.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Good for you sir, now would you like to pay for that sweater?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Oh sure.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were other signs that I was making a good choice. The grim promise of airport madness, threatened strikes, and in December bad weather reports that forecast snow and ice and delays and stranded people. All while I sat in my pjs on my couch, drank a beer and ate mashed potatoes along with something. My dad had decided (as he does now and then) that he would skip Christmas. In his mental mechanics of this plan, he doesn\u2019t get anyone a gift and they do the like. He enacts this plan by telling my mom and a few others, but doesn\u2019t mention it to his many friends and other relatives, instead hoping that his broad circle of friends and family can read his mind. Thus he ends up getting gifts and not reciprocating. This goes in tandem with a promise to only do one of our family\u2019s holiday parties (\u2018Let me tell you something, this year I\u2019m doing Christmas Eve and not Christmas. I\u2019m staying home. I\u2019ll order Chinese food.\u2019) I don\u2019t mind not getting or giving a gift, I just don\u2019t want to hear about it while watching football.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Christmas Eve, we spend the day watching Christmas movies and cooking. Our main dish is fried chicken cutlets, following the trend of our adoptive country. Later in the day I see pictures of my Langhorne home family Christmas. There are colorful hors d’oeuvres and salads and meatballs and happy Galeones in flannel shirts and elastic-waist pants. The tree is beautiful. In one of these pictures, my father actually looks happy, dare I say, teetering towards festive. Though he is holding a plate of pasta and it\u2019s hard to be unhappy while you\u2019re doing that. Though I am happy with my decision to stay here home for the holidays, I do feel some twinges of sadness and longing. There is nothing like home for the holidays. Even if home is far away, across a sea of discomforts and inconveniences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Christmas we have a wonderful day. I get and give gifts, finding in my old age that giving is more satisfying than getting and wondering why the world doesn\u2019t get that yet. We listen to Christmas tunes, walk the dog, watch movies, and eat chocolate. In the evening, we tidy up and eat eggrolls and jalapeno chicken poppers, the traditional Christmas dish of an American in Prague in 2022. Six hours behind us to the west, my family is settling in for another day of eating and pushing the boundaries of their elastic waistbands. I talk to a friend in the evening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Nah, I stayed here for Christmas this year, you know, it\u2019s great to get home \u2013 Langhorne home \u2013 for Christmas, but my parents and I basically agreed that I\u2019d come home every other year. I\u2019ll be there next year, though, don\u2019t you worry. Next year it\u2019ll be nice to have a big crazy family Christmas again.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Thanksgiving, I had said it probably 25 times, in almost exactly the same sentence structure, with the same subordinate additions. \u2018Nah, I\u2019m staying here for Christmas this year, you know, it\u2019s great to get home \u2013 Langhorne home \u2013 for Christmas, but yeah my parents and I basically agreed that I\u2019d come home every […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5764,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/damiengaleone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/spirit-of-the-season.jpg?fit=564%2C842&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1EvEu-1uX","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5763"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5763\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5765,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5763\/revisions\/5765"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}