There’s No Place Like Home for the Holidays
A reflection on the importance of place and creating a sense of rootedness with traditions
According to estimates, more than a third of Americans – nearly 113 million people – will hop on trains, planes, and automobiles to visit family and friends or just simply just get away from it all this coming holiday season.
Travel is edging closer to pre-pandemic levels, a sign of a return to normalcy after several uncommon years in America. This bounce back to regular rhythms also serves as a reminder of the places, people, and traditions that anchor our lives and provide a sense of meaning.
One steady theme at the Liberal Patriot is the idea of an inclusive nationalism, one that is engaged with the rest of the world in tackling shared global challenges and seizing new opportunities for progress in America and the world. At a time of so much division and rancor, it’s good to pause, take a step back, and look at the big picture but also the smaller things that form the fabric of our daily lives.
If you want to be happy in a million ways…
The building blocks of how we view the world and interact with it are forged closest to home, among families and friends in our immediate communities. All of us have our own traditions and beliefs developed from the earliest years, and we can easily call to mind the people in our families and communities who helped shape who we’ve become today.
Holidays like Christmas offer a sense of constancy with places and people we’ve known for years and often draw us back home. The original Christmas story, the one that brought Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem where Jesus was born, is homecoming story of sorts, one in which the couple travels back to Joseph’s family hometown for a census called by the Romans.
Regular practices like sharing special meals, songs, and rituals with friends and family deepen the connections with others who sustain us. That’s why so many people make the pilgrimage back to their first home over a holiday, even long after their place of residence has changed — to maintain the connection and recreate traditions in new ways.
I grew up in central Pennsylvania, only a few hours north from where I currently live in the Washington D.C. area. My family practiced the traditions of the Christmas season people would recognize from American popular culture at the time, and these are traditions I’ve kept alive around the world and in my current home with my family and friends.
Just a few weeks ago we learned the sad news that the home in the coal region of northeastern Pennsylvania where my grandparents lived nearly all of their lives and raised my father was razed to the ground to make way for new things. Many of the people and places I knew in my younger years are no longer with us — that’s a story everyone faces in life.
Houses may crumble to the ground and people will inevitably leave our lives. But my connection to the places and people from that time endure, and my circle of family and friends build new traditions based on the ones we had when I was younger. In a world of constant change and uncertainty, there’s something powerful in having those things that you look forward to each year during the holidays. These connections form the basis of a healthy, strong society and are the essential ingredients to a functional country and world.
For the holidays, you can't beat home sweet home
At this phase in my work life, I’ve often been asked to give advice to people at earlier stages in their careers. I usually share some of these ten tips, and the most important suggestion is to strive for balance in life.
One way to achieve that balance is through maintaining and building personal connections outside of your career and doing this while deepening your roots to a particular place or community. You need to have a home and a sense of connection to people and places to have the personal equilibrium for a happy, fulfilling life.
In America, many people choose to live where they were born and raise their families there — the sense of connection to their hometowns is strong. Several studies show that most Americans live in close proximity to where they grew up, including younger Americans. That’s the great thing about freedom in today’s America: it’s never perfect or complete, but most people usually a wide space for personal choice in defining one’s own path.
It’s an individualism that forged in community with others. Building strong interpersonal relationships free from toxic and destructive political conversations is a key part of building a better country and world.
So, during this holiday season, take a moment to think about the people, places, and traditions that made you who you are today, and ponder how you will carry these things forward to others into the world in the years to come.
And I don’t know if there’ll be snow – but have a cup of cheer.
