I’m not even sure how it started. Maybe traveling to her house for a holiday when she wasn’t there was too painful for us. Maybe it seemed like a shell of a home without her love and personality filling it. Or perhaps we just desperately needed a change. So we opted for a destination Christmas.

All of our families –my siblings and their kids and my dad–packed our bags one year and headed for the mountains. We traveled, every one of us from a different area, texting all the while and filling our bellies with road snacks and our hearts with anticipation. This year would be different, we knew, but we’d be together and that’s all that mattered.

We filled a huge house and bunked with one another. Every room filled to the brim with kids and parents, we settled in. In someone else’s garage, we found a scraggly old artificial Christmas tree, strands of tinsel, and a handful of white lights. In less than three minutes, the house –that tiny area of the living room where our Charlie Brown tree stood –was decorated.

We skipped gifts that year and skied instead. Friends loaned us warm-weather Floridians all the gear we could possibly need and we hit the slopes bundled up like the Michelin man. Some of us clumsy and some natural athletes, we all played in the snow from snow tubing to snowboarding to skiing, there was something for everyone.
It wasn’t so much the activity or the destination, but the fact that we were creating new memories together while carrying on past traditions of family, fun, and still our favorite holiday foods. It turned out to be my second-favorite Christmas that year (the first being a white Christmas years earlier). We’ve discussed it as a family and found destination holidays to be a thing of the future. Not every year, but some years.

Moving Forward

Someone recently mentioned not being brave enough to carry on traditions after a loved one passed. That’s not what it’s about. Some traditions are better laid to rest. But others, the best ones, are better carried forward or reshaped into new memories we create without burdening ourselves with baggage or exceedingly high expectations.

Destination holidays aren’t leaving the past behind. They’re adjusting to a new normal. They’re finding a better balance of the past, present, and future. It’s carrying on the very best of family traditions and continuing the legacy our loved one left behind. It looks like healing from the burden of grief while still remembering the very ones who’ve lovingly shaped our lives. It’s sharing memories and watching old home videos and laughing, embarrassedly while our in-laws see a new side of us.

Allowing God to Heal Us

Maybe for the deepest grief, a destination holiday seems like running away, hiding from the cheer around us. I’ve never seen it that way. To me, the deepest, most heart-wrenching grief needs a safe, quiet place to heal. Maybe a place free of the typical traditions and the pressure we put on ourselves to provide the same celebrations we experienced before a loss.

Whether it’s staying at home or straying from home for the holidays, there’s One who’ll be with us regardless. God knows our deepest grief and weeps with us. He longs to comfort you if you’ll let him. One of my favorite passages is from Psalm 56. An ancient custom among the Greeks and Romans was to preserve their tears in a bottle. They stored their tears in a bottle of glass or clay at the tomb where they buried their loved one.

God keeps track of our sorrows and remembers them. He collects our tears in a bottle so one day, he can wipe them away (Revelation 21:4). He knows your heart and your loss and loves you desperately.

So go ahead and cry this Christmas. Stay home. Travel. Wherever you go, God is with you and will comfort you if you’ll let him.

P.S. If you’ve traveled for a destination holiday, I’d love to hear about it! Share below in the comments or hop over to Facebook and join the conversation. <3