Ways we can be ‘Home for Christmas’

I'll be home for Christmas

You can plan on me

Please have snow and mistletoe

And presents on the tree

Christmas Eve will find me

Where the lovelight gleams

I'll be home for Christmas

If only in my dreams

(Kent and Gannon, 1943)

I’ll be home for Christmas…. Recorded in 1943 by Bing Crosby, this song became an instant classic. It was well-loved by servicemen and their families during the final Christmases of World War II as it depicting the longings and loneliness of a soldier’s letter home. The simple melody and words combine to create a song suffused with a familiar Christmas feeling: homesickness.

Especially in this season we feel it: a yearning for warmth, beloved relationships, traditional sights, sounds and tastes, now and long gone. We want to be enfolded in a sacred moment with all we value around us.

You can plan on me. When our young family lived in a tiny town in Holland many years ago, we discovered that the Dutch have the precise adjective to describe what a perfect Christmas evening might be like: gezellig. The closest translation into English is cozy, but the word means so much more: warm camaraderie, a relaxed setting, good food, gentle laughter. We could see examples of this during evening walks through our neighborhood. Because the Dutch have a long tradition of leaving their drapes open (a backlash to the protective closings required during WW II occupation), we could look into the large front windows and see families gathered together for the evening, eating, laughing, and talking in a warm glow of light. Seeing those gezellig family circles made me feel homesick for my parents and siblings far away. Remembering it now makes me homesick for that little neighborhood, again, far away.

Please have snow and mistletoe, and presents on the tree. Many years later, my now-Alaska-based family found ourselves celebrating Christmas in West Africa, living at a school just outside Accra, Ghana. My children entreated me and my husband to sleep in on Christmas morning, and warned us that they would be getting up early to “prepare.” And prepare they did. With no money and simple resources, they created a beautiful Christmas gift for us under the African sun: snow. We arose to find paper snowflakes suspended from the high ceilings—a snowstorm of thoughtfulness and love. For a moment, we were home for Christmas.

These memories cause me to wonder if the Christmas Spirit isn’t really a form of heavenly homesickness. In our longing for the angelic realm we instinctively do angelic things, albeit awkwardly: we put up lights, invite people over, give gifts, sing songs, even hang paper snowflakes. A great many Christmas traditions help us to bring a spirit into our lives that enable us to appreciate God’s greatest gift even more:

“For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given… and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace,” we read in Isaiah 9:6.

Over 2000 years ago, our Father sent His Son, the embodiment of the Christmas Spirit. He came to serve, to love, to save. As we read, ponder, and pray about those events, we feel that longing to understand, to be drawn into the heavenly circle, to feel its warmth and safety. We are homesick.

Christmas Eve will find me where the lovelight gleams. In our longing, we can bask in and share the ‘lovelight’ alluded to in this beautiful song: we can speak the kind word, clean up a mess, have patience with a child, enjoy sacred music, reflect on the Savior’s sweet gift, pray.

I’ll be home for Christmas…. The first Christmas after we were married,my husband and I considered taking the long drive from our university to my parents’ home. My parents even offered to pay for gas. But my wise young husband suggested we stay in our tiny college apartment and create our own traditions. Though we loved our parents, now was the time for us to become our own little family and establish our own traditions. So we did. We hung homemade decorations on a cast-off tree, called family on Christmas Day, but stayed home for a gezellig, memorableChristmas.

…if only in my dreams. Tomorrow is Christmas Day—time to be home for Christmas, make memories of Christmas, and remember our Heavenly Father and His Beloved Son. May we feel a longing for His presence, and the present of His closeness as we create a Christmas celebration that will long live in the dreams of those we love.

Merry Christmas

Kristin Fry has been the musical director for valley theatre productions, she was a vocal soloist in this year's Messiah production, she teaches in the valley and is happily married and has children and grandchildren around the globe. Kristin also volunteers for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.