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You are here: Home Leisure Travel & Tourism Surviving the Christmas visit back home

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29/07/2003Surviving the Christmas visit back home

Surviving the Christmas visit back home Relatives, friends, parties, dinners — Expatica longs for a survival strategy for that trip to the home town this Christmas.

Visiting the home town for those who have spent an extended period living in another part of the world should be an exhilarating event.
Visiting home case can be stressful
Catching up with family and friends and padding around old haunts after a long break away should produce some heady times with the excitement often building long before the estimated time of arrival approaches. The problem is that once on the ground actually cramming in all those appointments, manoeuvring your way around conflicts between friends and keeping out of family politics can turn what should be a series of relaxed chummy social occasions into something like a major military operation.  And statistics show that one is far more likely to be killed by a relative at Christmas than by terrorism. I must admit that despite having spent years living aboard and having chalked up several home visits, I still have not worked what the best strategy is. The December holiday period is the season to be jolly, but sometimes we are only going through the motions. Conversations appear to be frozen at the point of entry — repeated over and over again at every day spent on the (often back-to-back) breakfast-lunch-dinner circuit. What is more, the longer the gap since the last visit the more that tensions seemed to have crept into relationships between old friends while elderly family members appear to have become even more demanding. Everyone wants you to pop over to say hello, share a drink and munch on a plate of mince pies. Everyone wants a compliment and wants to find out if you are having a better time abroad. In between are the quick tours of house renovations that have taken place since the last time you were in town. Some people who were couples are now singles — that now makes two appointments. Email has been a boon for those living in a different time zones and keeping in touch with home base. It also seemed good for arranging trips home. As a result, instead of hitting the ground running and spending a stressful first day trying to line up dates, all the appointments could be put in place in advance and with the ease of organising an official visit by chief executive. The only problem I found was that sticking to a strict social programme for longer than a few days was beyond me. This is probably why I have never risen to chief executive level. That was the visit three years ago. Before that on other visits I asked friends to organise a big party to get everyone together or tried restricting the social scene for only half the time I was in town. The rest was planned as free time. But then everyone wanted to "catch up before you leave." (Am I really so interesting?). Maybe my survival instincts have been honed by all these visits, because on the last trip home this month I hardly saw anyone. UPDATED 15 December 2005 [Copyright Expatica 2005] Subject: The visit back home


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