No Place Like Home (Away From Home) for the Holidays

Growing up in a military family, we moved around a lot – every few years we found ourselves in a new home, in a new state, surrounded by new people. As such, we became very dedicated to our holiday traditions. Because there was no consistency in where we spent the holidays, what we did during the holidays became the special part. And so, the traditions grew and grew – to the point where I know exactly what we will be doing at any given point during the three days surrounding Christmas. When I left home, I was still able to return each year for Christmas, but took to creating some of my own holiday traditions in the month of December – I needed to find ways of keeping the Christmas cheer alive before I was able to get home to our regular traditions. It got…excessive, some may say, but it is my favorite time of year! I start making ornaments and decorations in October (it takes a long time to cut out as many snowflakes as I am looking for). I make a Christmas movie schedule and watch a movie each day in December leading up to the 25th. I host a big holiday party, and a stage a Christmas-movie-themed card that I still send out via snail mail. I walk through Christmas markets, and take myself on a date to see The Nutcracker. I get people together to sing Christmas carols. I start making my lists of what gifts I want to give months before December comes, and I carefully coordinate my wrapping theme each year. I go see light shows, and go ice skating, and find a production of A Christmas Carol to attend. And none of the above even begins to scratch the family traditions.

Suffice it to say, my first holiday season away from home was going to be different. I’ve never missed a family Christmas. (One year I flew back from Bulgaria on Christmas Eve, and one year I flew out for London the afternoon of Christmas Day. Slight deviations, but not nearly as dramatic as living in China.) So this year was all about finding ways to maintain old traditions while creating new traditions as well!

Thanksgiving, for me, is about two things: seeing Santa at the end of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, and mashed potatoes. It’s really as simple as that. My favorite part of the holiday is waking up, putting on the parade, seeing all of the floats, watching the Broadway performances, and trying not to cry when Santa shows up at the end. (I…am never successful. I have cried every year for as long as I can remember.) I spent a whole lunch hour at school trying to explain the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade to my non-American colleagues; they were riddled with (very valid and sometimes unanswerable) questions: “Are there big parades that everyone watches for every holiday in the States?” No, this is the biggest. “Why is there a parade for Thanksgiving?” I…don’t know. “What happens for Christmas?” We all sort of hermit in our own homes and do our own thing. “Why would Santa come during a Thanksgiving day parade? Shouldn’t he come during a Christmas parade??” IT DOESN’T MATTER BECAUSE NOW I CAN OFFICIALLY START BEING EXCITED FOR CHRISTMAS AND NO ONE CAN PROTEST ANYMORE, DAMNIT!

Being half a day ahead in time from the States meant that while the Parade would air at 9:00 am back home, the parade started for me at 10:00 pm. However, with a VPN that makes my computer think I live in California, the parade for ME began at about 1:00 am. Perhaps a normal person would think to themselves, “Ah, much too late to begin a parade when you have to wake up for work at 5:00 am the next day. Just watch it tomorrow!” However, my brain does not work like that. Did I wake myself up on and off all night to check in with two different livestreams of the parade? Yes, yes I did. Was it worth it? Absolutely. (And yes. I did cry when Santa appeared.) Over the following weekend, a few other teachers and I got together for a Thanksgiving potluck. We each brought something to contribute and forged ourselves a little holiday family. It’s a really lovely perk about being an expat – right away, you adopt each other as your substitute family. We talked, and laughed, and enjoyed each other’s company – and don’t worry, there were plenty of mashed potatoes.

As you may have guessed, I am someone who likes to go all out with decorations for Christmas. (I have some decorations back in the States that I spent 40+ hours making, and no, that is not an exaggeration.) Though I’d been cutting snowflakes and making paper chains, after Thanksgiving it was time to put up the most important part of holiday decorating: the Christmas tree. My friend and I set out to the Hongqiao Flower Market with the goal of finding trees for each of our apartments. At first, I was set on getting a real tree. I have always had real trees, and much prefer them to fake ones. However, as I was walking through the market, I saw the largest (fake) tree I’d ever seen. At least 3 meters (about 10 feet) tall, regal, and HUGE. As I may never again live in another house where I would have the room for a tree this large, I couldn’t resist. The ceiling in my living room was begging for a massive tree, and who am I to say no?!

When I brought the shopkeeper over to point at the tree I wanted, he looked at me skeptically. He waved his hand, and pointed instead at a more manageably sized tree next to it. “No, no,” I assured him. “That one,” I said, pointing at the Ent that stood before me. He again shook his head, pointing at the other trees around him, thinking I could not be serious. After a few more back and forths, in which I tried (through gesturing) to assure him I had the space for it, he shrugged and went to pack it up for me. At this point, most people would have asked to have the tree delivered – its box stood almost as tall as me, and I couldn’t even wrap my arms around it. But I’ve always been more of a “do-it-yourself” sort of girl, so into a taxi my tree and I went.

When the taxi dropped me off in front of my house and I managed to get the box out of the car and onto the pavement, I had a moment of “Huh. I didn’t think this part through.” I live on the 3rd floor. I live alone. I could not carry the box, could not even lift it off of the ground. Huh. Can’t go over it, can’t go under it, must go through it, eh? I reached under two of the corners and used all of my strength to lift one end of the box up, then gently bring it down on the opposite end. Score! (I was already sweating.) Only an entire entry way, a rounded staircase, and the crazy steep stairs to get into my apartment to go!

When I’d up-and-downed my tree into the building and started attempting to make my way up the first staircase (much trickier – no flat surface to flip it over onto, so all of the weight just kept trying to come back down on me…) a few of my neighbors came out to see what kind of trouble that new weird white girl was getting into now. I should mention: I don’t think any of my neighbors are under the age of 85. Age doesn’t seem to slow people down over here – every day, I see elderly people riding their bikes, performing amazing acts of contortion to get their laundry hung out of their windows, and climbing the staircases in my building like champions. When they saw me struggling to lift the tree up the first few stairs, one of my neighbors immediately came over to help me. She is the neighbor I see most often, always wearing her pink bathrobe as she shuffles around the apartment building – I say hi to her almost every morning as I head off to work, while the rest of the house is still sleeping. Pink Lady came up and tried to squat down and help me lift. Though her support was more of the moral rather than muscular kind, she stayed with me, arms up to catch me if I or the box fell, until I managed to finally get the tree up into my front door. Workout done for the day, I then began the process of assembling and decorating.

Having only ever had real trees in the past, the puzzle of trying to figure out how to attach the branches and where to put them and how to fluff them all out took quite some time. I couldn’t even pretend to reach the top of the tree if I tried, so when I got to the upper half I had to drag in a chair from my dining room and shift it around the tree as I went. Hours passed (6, to be exact), but then I’d finally assembled, lit, and decorated my giant tree. I put on one of my family’s traditional Christmas albums – Weihnachten mit Heintje – and sat down to appreciate my day’s work.

Though Christmas is not really a Chinese holiday, Shanghai is not without Christmas spirit. Because there are so many expats (and businesses trying to draw expats in), you can certainly find your fair share of festive decorations, lights, and trees put up outside of businesses. One thing I am very happy I was able to find here were the German-ish Christmas markets! Though I still wasn’t able to find a pickle ornament (if you know, you know), I WAS able to satisfy my desire for a brat and some glühwein. Plus, this was a great way to discover even more local artists and small businesses! I’ve slowly been gathering more and more local treasures, and it makes me so happy to see my house slowly starting to fill with color and character.

This year, I decided to try out a new Christmas tradition I’ve been wanting to do: a live reading of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Though it’s a story I know backwards and forwards, and there are at least 3 movie adaptations I watch every year, I had never actually read the book before this year. However, I knew that Dickens himself used to do public readings of it, so I decided it would be fun to give it a go. I lit candles throughout my living room, invited friends over, and we took turns reading aloud, chapter by chapter. Though it took about 3 hours to read, I found I was captivated the entire time. There’s something special about unplugging from your phone and taking the time to immerse yourself in a story. (It certainly helps that this is a very good story!) For the record – I only teared up once or twice, so, really, I’m making great progress!

After the reading, I set up my makeshift bed under the Christmas tree. For as long as I can remember, on the night of December 23rd (or “Christmas Adam,” as we call it in my family) my brothers and I have set up sleeping bags and slept beneath the tree. I am told this originated because we’d originally wanted to sleep under the tree on Christmas Eve but couldn’t (our parents didn’t want us to be there when Santa arrived), so we settled on sleeping there the night before instead. It’s a silly tradition, and even when I am back home I am the only sibling that still sleeps under the tree for the full night (my brothers have taken to maybe sleeping on the couch, and then going in to bed), but I wasn’t about to let this be the first year I don’t do it! The next morning, I FaceTimed with my family back home while they carried out our other big Christmas Adam tradition – driving around with milkshakes and looking for Christmas lights. (And listening to our old Veggie Tales Christmas Party cd. Tradition is tradition!) Through my phone screen, I sang along with Bob and Larry and watched as we drove by house after decorated house back in Pennsylvania.

Surprisingly enough, being 13 hours ahead of home was not as complicated as it could have been for the remainder of our holiday festivities. Where we usually celebrate on the evening of Christmas Eve and the morning of Christmas Day, I was able to tune in both morning and evening on the 25th. My family looped me in via Zoom (thankful for modern technology!) so I was able to be a part of all of the usual events – including a Christmas Eve holiday skit, which this year featured one of its actors (me) over a screen, on a laptop, placed on top of a chair. My mom had sent me some Christmas gifts earlier in November, and so after a few hours at customs with a friend who speaks more Mandarin than I do, I too had some gifts to unwrap. They set me up on a Lazy Susan in the living room, rotating my screen around so I could see everyone as they opened their gifts, and it actually felt, surprisingly, normal. Family gathering together (though somewhat virtually) to laugh and catch up and tease each other and reminisce – that’s what the holidays are all about. Moving across the world doesn’t have to change that.

In between my morning and evening family Zoom calls, I set out to make our classic Christmas meal: fleischkuekle. (For anyone trying to sound that out: fleish-keek-luh.) A German meal that basically consists of a meatball in a little pocket of fried dough, fleischkuekle has been my family’s Christmas meal for as long as I can remember, and we have an efficient system: Dad makes the dough, I roll the meatballs, then the two of us roll, fold, and pinch each of the fleischkuekle until they are ready to be fried – that’s where my brother steps in and helps Dad with the rest. Though I had to get a bit creative without a fryer and hadn’t ever made them on my own before, I still managed to whip up a (significantly smaller than usual) batch. Christmas dinner for one!

One of my biggest takeaways from this holiday season was the way in which things can be both different and the same, all at the same time. I spent Christmas over 7,000 miles away from my family; I spent Christmas with my family. I rushed to finish up my holiday shopping by October to allow for enough delivery time; I was able to see my everyone’s reactions as they opened the gifts I bought them. I put up a fake tree and decorated it alone; I squinted my eyes to see what shapes I could find in the tree lights just after putting up the last ornament. I had to hunt for old Christmas albums on Apple music and Youtube rather than playing our well-loved CDs; I cozied up with a hot chocolate while listening to a young Heintje singing “Es ist ein Ros entsprungen.” I used a metal water bottle to roll dough because I don’t have a rolling pin; I ate fleischkuekle on Christmas Day. If 2020 taught us anything, it’s that things can change in an instant. But change doesn’t have to be bad. The month leading up to Christmas was hard for me – there was a lot of spontaneous crying. I missed my friends and my family, I missed the things I would be doing with them back in the States, I worried that spending Christmas alone would be really hard, or that I wouldn’t feel the holiday magic like I usually do. I worried it would be so different that it wouldn’t feel like Christmas anymore. And yet, as a jolly muppet reminds me every year, “wherever you find love, it feels like Christmas.” Love over a Zoom call feels like Christmas. Love through a Facebook message feels like Christmas. Love baked into cookies and dropped on a doorstep feels like Christmas. Love sent through emailed pictures feels like Christmas. This holiday season may have felt very different for a lot of us, but look for those places you find love and you’ll see that it wasn’t so different, not really. Happy (belated, because I can never seem to get these posted within a reasonable time frame) Holidays, with love, from Shanghai.