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Home plus Christmas equal good memories

By ANDREW SKERRITT
Published December 25, 2005

An old friend is spending her first Christmas in America.

She's homesick for the Caribbean: warmth, calypso music, Christmas caroling, food, old friends.

Christmas isn't quite the same away from that place called home.

I know. This is my 20th Christmas in America, my third in Florida. And I am just getting to the place where I can listen to Christmas carols on the radio without that emotional ache in my chest of wanting to go home for the holidays.

Now instead of homesickness, my dreams are repeatedly of being at home; they transport me to the past. And these aren't detached dreams; the details linger even when I awake, triggering that old feeling of wanting to be home for Christmas.

Enjoying Christmas away from home takes time, a long time. Because Christmas is often associated with childhood, a time of expectations and disappointment, it requires holding on to some of the past and embracing much of what's new.

When I was growing up in Montserrat, Christmas coincided with carnival celebrations, parties, concerts, late night and early morning church services, friends and relatives vacationing from America and England.

Christmas also was a time for work. My grandmother sold homemade ice cream and American apples at Christmas festival events. Our ice cream machine needed manpower.

I painted the house each Christmas. It also was time for that massive house cleaning.

"I can't let Christmas come and find my house like this," my grandmother used to say. But along with the cleaning ritual was the fun food. Each Christmas, my grandmother baked fresh bread, raisin buns, fruitcake, and coconut plate tarts - think of an apple pie but with sugared grated coconut filling. It was food for the soul and spirit.

People came home at Christmastime. With expatriates and their children visiting from England and the States, Christmas was a very social time: a time for teen romance; for many adults, a season to rekindle old loves and friendships.

The thing about this special holiday, though, is that it's way too easy to dwell on the sad Christmases . Unfortunately, I am one of those folks with a December birthday. Friends and relatives always seemed to be too busy to remember anything else but Christmas.

There also were disappointments of unrequited teenage love. The names and the faces of those girls still linger in memory. Then there was the year my older sister went away to visit relatives and for the first time, I had to go shopping on Christmas Eve night alone.

With a spotty history of Christmases past, how does one create a merry American Christmas?

Time helps. My American Christmases began pretty inauspiciously. During those first years, I spent Christmases in New York - no town does Christmas like New York City. The bright lights in Manhattan and the magic of visiting Macy's Herald Square were intoxicating. It just wasn't home.

Going home also helps. In 20 years, I've been home for the Christmas holidays twice. The first time, I went alone, a homesick college student desperate to relive the days of my youth. The second time, 1990, I was accompanied by my wife and my 11-month-old son. We went for my sister-in-law's wedding. That was my favorite Christmas. I still look at the family photos of us playing on the beach, the mountains and cliffs in the background. My son, his eyes filled with fear of the big wide ocean as waves rushed toward him. My wife sitting on an old mounted cannon. The perfect setting for Christmas in the tropics.

Over the last decade or so, I've learned that parenthood and marriage are perhaps the best antidotes for the Christmas blahs. Lessons from the disappointing holiday seasons of childhood prepared me to help enrich the season for my two children.

Best of all, it's great being married to a woman who also has a December birthday and who just loves Christmas. She may not bake fruitcakes like my grandmother, but her holiday spirit is contagious; it buoys me. The understated way she decorates with red and green linen; the lights, trees, and ornaments say it's the season of cheer. The music in her car and on the boom box at home sings, I'll be home for Christmas.

It makes me feel like I'm really home for Christmas.

Andrew Skerritt can be reached at 813 909-4602 or toll free at 1-800-333-7505, ext. 4602. His e-mail address is askerritt@sptimes.com

[Last modified December 24, 2005, 23:42:16]