There's something comforting about coming home for the holidays. We know it's a universal concept based on the dozens of holiday movies made on the subject each year. But the truth is, home is hard to define, and it changes over time. As children, your home is the house where your parents live. The place you go to bed with a heart full of anticipation as you await Christmas morning or the first night of Hannukah. Twenty or thirty years down the line, your parents' house may not feel like home at all. It's hard to put your finger on the feeling of home, but you know it when you feel it. It feels familiar, safe, and warm. Since families come in different shapes and sizes with different holiday traditions, comparing experiences from person to person isn't easy. Some people have an unpleasant feeling about their childhood home or may not have a "home" to return to at all. Fortunately, home is more than a place. It's a feeling that you get to define for yourself. If you're lucky, the spirit of home sticks with you for the rest of our life. No matter what season of life you're in, memories of past holidays surface this time of year. Some are joyful, others are sad, but all remind you of moments in your history that defined who you have become. After all, the core memories that establish your feeling of home come not from a building but the emotions evoked through relationships and traditions. As the weather gets colder, driving people inside, and the houses in your neighborhood twinkle with lights, you have a sense that something familiar is coming. The moment you move out of your childhood home and into an adult life of your own, the concept of home shifts, often for the first time. Parents downsize, divorce, and move out of state, but even if you have a home to return to, it's usually a place you're actively outgrowing. Eventually, you plant roots of your own, and the space you share with your partners and friends becomes more home than any place you lived as a child. For the first time in human history, we have access to opportunities all over the world. In today's culture, it's not uncommon for young people to move states or even countries away from their families, searching for jobs, education, and new adventures. Our worldliness has led to new kinds of holiday celebrations like Friendsgiving. 16
Aging Times Magazine | December 2021
