'Til my friends come home for Christmas
The evolution of hometown holiday reunions
When I was 21, my friend and I took Amtrak’s Vermonter from New York to Brattleboro, Vermont, just a short drive from our New Hampshire hometown. She was coming from NYU, and I’d wrapped up a semester at Rutgers. We were going home for Christmas.
On the train, we drank red wine, ate pizza, took pictures and laughed as we built little towers out of wrappers in the dining car (the trip felt long and we were bored).
We also drew a map. On this map, we illustrated the places we loved, or thought we might love. We both drew circles around our colleges in New Jersey and New York. She highlighted Austin, Texas; a place she thought she might one day live. I highlighted Chicago. Then I turned New England into a cow for some reason (again, the trip felt long and we were bored; this wasn’t a serious activity).
When we arrived in Vermont, we went to our parents’ houses about 10 minutes from each other, and we knew it wasn’t a goodbye — it was the start of winter break and the joy of hometown friend reunions. I knew I’d see her and the rest of our friends half a dozen more times over break.
Fifteen Decembers later, we’re still close friends. She has a family of her own in, sure enough, Austin, and I’m in Boston. I have no idea when I’ll see her again.
The season of the sticks
Vermont’s singer-songwriter Noah Kahan was the musical guest on Saturday Night Live last weekend, and I’ve been walking around singing his song “Stick Season” in my head the whole week since. In it, Kahan talks about going through a tough time of change and loss while waiting for his friends to come home:
I love Vermont, but it’s the season of the sticks
And I saw your mom, she forgot that I existed
And it’s half my fault, but I just like to play the victim
I’ll drink alcohol ‘til my friends come home for Christmas
Kahan is 26, five years older than I was when I was making maps on the Vermonter, but still in the window where rural hometowns have a draw. At 26, I was similarly waiting to see my friends at Christmas.
But as you move deeper into adulthood, you watch your hometown cease to be the center of gravity it once was. Among friends, the word “home” goes from shared, to ambiguous, to different: at some point, my friends and I stopped asking each other “are you going home for Christmas?” and started asking “are you going to New Hampshire?”
Some of this is specific to the context of moving away from a small city or town: there’s just less reason to go back to a New Hampshire town an hour and a half from a regional airport than there is to stop home in, say, Baltimore. There’s no connecting flights, shows, conferences, or opportunities to “happen” to bring my friends or me back. The only reason to visit New Hampshire is to visit New Hampshire.
But some of this is reflective of how friendships evolve in general, regardless of where or how they begin. As I wrote about in an earlier newsletter, friendships don’t always withstand life changes like moves, job changes, pregnancy, sobriety. Even the most loving friendships can get deprioritized through the pressures and changes of adult life.
Sure enough, as my hometown friends and I got older, we started to see each other less. First, the windows grew shorter. “I’m coming home the 24th-30th, you?” “22-26, I might be free the evening of the 24th?” Several nights out turned into one night out, which turned into “what if we do lunch before you take off?” Until, one day, there were no more lunches.
Friends grow up, have partners, have kids, gain new families to visit. No one has that much time off from work. Everyone has obligations. Not everyone’s parents still live in our hometown.
As with many parts of growing up, crossing the threshold from holiday reunions to separate plans can be lonely — especially when you find yourself having a year when you could really use the camaraderie of that hometown reunion.
Yet, being on the other side of the holiday-reunion-era can be deeply fulfilling in new ways. For me, visiting my hometown without social plans means more quality time with my parents, which I’m grateful for, and I’ve loved spending every other year in Kansas with my husband’s family. Plus, I’m at an age where watching Elf on the couch at 7pm is way more appealing than being at a town bar at midnight (or, honestly, being anywhere at midnight).
But we all move on at our own pace, and not everyone has everything they hope for over the holidays. Some years are harder than others. It’s easy to feel left behind, left out, or alone. Even as someone fortunate enough to have family to be with at Christmas, I feel a twinge of envy and longing seeing Kahan’s eyes sparkle as he sings about the promise of seeing his friends.
I’d love to be back with my hometown friends this Christmas, laughing, crowding the jukebox, staring at the door wondering which high school memory might stroll in, sharing onion rings and cheap cocktails, and feeling free from the world outside our circle. I’d love to take the train to get there, drawing maps with a friend depicting a separate but intertwined future. But, with those days in the past, I’ll be grateful for texts and group chats — the virtual ways old friends maintain ties across our new centers of gravity that pull us towards distant homes and away from one another. In the bittersweet words of Noah Kahan, “that’ll have to do.”
I really enjoyed this one. Having moved our family to a new state in our mid 30’s we realized our lives were the ones that changed while those we left behind continued along their usual path. With a few we stayed in touch for a while and then contact dropped off until we no longer heard from them. But others, even after 30+ years, we still get our annual Christmas card and catch up on each others’ families. I so look forward to those holiday greetings. While it’s not the same as when we lived there, our communication still holds special meaning and brings back very fond memories of the times we spent together all those years ago. It really is “the most wonderful time of the year.”