Celebrating Holidays Abroad & Christmas Decoration 2019

Living Abroad & Celebrating Holidays

If you live abroad, you probably agree that the hardest time to be away from your home and families is the holiday season. The holiday time with many social gatherings reminds you of your own families and close friends back home. Not being with them feels so real during that time.

Focus Of Our Holiday Celebrations Abroad

Having lived abroad for many years, my husband and I have celebrated numerous holidays away from our families and home countries.

There were 5 holiday seasons that we celebrated as a married couple before kids. The focus at that time was more on our parents, siblings, relatives and friends. We managed to see at least one side of our families during every holiday season. Except for one. The very first time my husband and I spent Christmas and New Year’s away from both of our families happened during our time in Dakar, Senegal in West Africa. We celebrated the holidays with our new friends in Dakar, which was wonderful. Nevertheless, I remember vividly how I missed and longed for the cozy holiday celebrations with our parents and siblings in the familiar settings. There’s nothing more comforting than the fragrance and flavors of holidays.

After our first child joined us in 2004, the significance of holidays for us started to change shape. My husband and I have talked about how we would like to celebrate holidays so that our child (& then children) could grow up knowing our cultures. Our focus shifted from simply having fun to fostering holiday traditions as a family. Creating memories with and for our children has become the core of our family holiday celebrations wherever we are.

Holiday Decorations At Home

While living abroad, we usually can’t afford to fly back to our home countries for the holidays in December. Our home away from home has been the base for our family celebrations. Holiday celebrations consist of many elements to make it a whole: decorations in town and home, rituals, community, entertainment, music, and food. When you live in a country where the holidays you celebrate are not celebrated in the same way, the weight is on you to keep them alive in your family.

In many cultures, I have witnessed that women take charge of cooking food and decorating for holidays. I felt the weight of responsibility on myself to keep the cultural aspects of our holidays going in our family while living away from our homes. My husband would not do it. I knew that I didn’t have to, but I wanted to. I must say that it’s not easy. Especially cooking food for celebration can be very daunting abroad. Decorating home for holidays, on the other hand, is easier.

Decorating home for the holidays, especially for Christmas and New Year’s, brings joy and festive coziness to living space. It was something that I wanted to provide for my family. Thus, I started to make an effort to decorate home for the holidays after our first child had arrived. By doing so, my intention was to create the holiday cheer and atmosphere for my family wherever we were. Hopefully my husband and I were able to instill our cultures in our kids.

This is just a personal side note, but I think it would be so nice to see more men participate in keeping the cultures within families. It’s more common to see men enforcing traditions, but a role to preserve cultures seems to still depend more on women to this day.

Christmas Decoration 2019

Here are photos of Christmas decorations in our house in Manila this year. I take photos of them so that I can go back to these in the future. Some expats go home during this time of year. For that, decorating may feel like a lot. For us who stay in our home for Christmas, it means a lot to be able to recreate the feelings of home in our home abroad. I feel that they cheer us up so much.

I wish I could decorate with more, but I have a rule where I allow myself to have decorations that fit in 3 plastic tubs. They’re just enough for our living room and dining room. I hope you will enjoy seeing the photos of my home decorated for Christmas.

Dining Room

Christmas Tree

Living Room

Entryway