As I prepared for my second Burmese language progress evaluation last month, I also was getting ready for a special Christmas at home in Virginia. The reasons it was special were twofold. One, my dad (and later my stepdaughters) were planning to visit from out of state; and two, it would be the last Christmas V and I would be in the United States, potentially for years.
I was really happy that for a second year in a row, my dad — who lives on the west coast — braved the winter weather and unpredictability of holiday travel to spend Christmas with us on the east coast. I have taken the reverse trip many, many times. My dad’s presence at our last Virginia Christmas before the big move to Burma in summer 2025 was precious to me, and to V, who lost his own father more than 25 years ago.
I think for many Foreign Service Officers, Christmas can be an especially poignant holiday. More so than any other, Christmas carries deeply ingrained expectations of how it should look and feel that can be different for each of us. Being overseas without the familiar traditions and trappings of a classic Christmas can be lonely—especially if travel home isn’t an option or if you’re separated from your closest loved ones.
Christmas 2014
I understood this even the first Christmas after I joined the Foreign Service (FS). The year was 2014, and we’d had just enough of a pause in my Russian language study to take a Hail Mary flight out to California. I didn’t know then that 2014 would be the last Christmas in the United States for V and I for five years. I also guessed the coming Christmases in Uzbekistan would be much different than anything I had experienced before, and I was right.
Christmas 2015
Christmas 2015 in Tashkent was our first overseas FS Christmas. It was also unique because we celebrated it in a majority-Muslim country. We bought a Christmas tree for around $150 USD from a landscaper, who thought we were slightly nuts. Our HHE had come months before with all of our Christmas ornaments and decorations undamaged, and it was comforting to see our tree adorned in a “strange” place with those long-loved, familiar pieces.
On Christmas morning we had to evacuate into our snowy front yard when the embassy’s carbon monoxide monitor for our house went off. It turned out to be a false alarm. Later that night, as we were drifting off to sleep, an earthquake shook our bed and startled us awake, but fortunately nothing was damaged. Merry Christmas!
Christmas 2016
Our second Uzbek Christmas in 2016 brought the predictable shortage of cut Christmas trees, leading us to hunt for the perfect one at another commercial landscaper’s lot along the ring road—this time in the midst of a full-blown blizzard. That year, I received some beautiful Uzbek ornaments from an embassy Secret Santa party, which I still cherish.
As the calendar turned over, V went to visit his then-teen daughters in South Carolina and I traveled to St. Petersburg, Russia to celebrate an unforgettable Orthodox Christmas.
Since my onward assignment from Tashkent was Canberra, for the following two Christmases we found ourselves down under. In Australia, of course, Christmas falls in summer, so again the holidays were much different than what we were used to.
Christmas 2017
In 2017, our first Christmas in Canberra, we had a low-key celebration. I was between a foot surgery and a back surgery and the preceding months had hit us very hard personally, professionally, and financially.
Getting a Christmas tree in the parking lot of Bunnings (the Australian Home Depot) was easy enough, but it sure was hot outside! I took pictures of V tying the tree to the roof of our Nissan Murano wearing a short-sleeved shirt and khaki shorts. Our neighbors and Australian friends sent us Christmas cards featuring surfing Santas, koalas with snorkels frolicking on sandy beaches, and snowmen decked out in pool gear.
Christmas 2018
By Christmas 2018, things had settled a bit for us in our new lives and I reflected on how the holidays feel different in the southern hemisphere. I was frustrated but grateful that the five-week government furlough that overlapped with Christmas negatively impacted us administratively but not financially.
We embraced the seafood-for-Christmas-dinner Aussie tradition, wore tee-shirts and shorts on Christmas morning, and laughed at how quickly my Christmas cookie frosting melted in our hot house that lacked central A/C.
Despite a bicycle accident V had a few days after Christmas, we still were able to enjoy a once-in-a-lifetime New Year’s Eve celebration at the Sydney Opera House. Having the embassy shut down when you’re expecting Christmas mail *and* need support during a hospitalization in your host country were not-fun aspects of an otherwise fun holiday season.
December 2024
Christmas 2019
By Christmas 2019, we had returned to the United States from Australia. We were living in Arlington, Virginia in PCS lodging while I studied Spanish at FSI in anticipation of my third tour to Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. That first Christmas in the States in five years was a quiet Christmas at home, not knowing the COVID-19 pandemic lurked only weeks away. Had I known, I probably would have gone to the west coast to see my family for Christmas. But I didn’t know.
In addition, all of our Christmas ornaments and decorations were in storage. (I was on overseas-to-overseas orders, so when our HHE left Australia, it came not to Virginia but sailed to the Port of Los Angeles. It was later trucked to an El Paso, Texas warehouse where it awaited our arrival in Mexico before completing its year-long journey. It would not have made sense to put fragile ornaments in our air freight, which typically gets roughed up a bit more than HHE, so I’d known since our Australia packout that we’d be sans our Christmas stuff for Christmas.)
To top it off, I was also going on a language immersion trip to Ecuador and wouldn’t return until right before Christmas Eve anyway. I was a little bummed to be living in the United States but still not have a “typical” Christmas, but figured it was just the two of us and we’d get over it.
But then I learned shortly before the Ecuador trip that my stepdaughter A would come to visit V in my absence. I was sorry to miss her, but she had to travel according to her college break and my schedule just didn’t align. I didn’t want the apartment to be depressing in the absence of any festive spirit, so I’d hastily gone to Target and bought a small (but very cute) artificial Christmas tree and some colorful ornaments, all of which we still have. V and A had a great visit, I had a great immersion, and decorating our temporary apartment — however “non-traditionally” — made a true difference to our enjoyment of Christmas.
Christmas 2020
As it turned out, 2020 was not the year to travel for Christmas either. The pandemic raged. We sat in our house in Mexico, sad and missing our families but glad everyone we loved was safe. Around double-work acting for my boss, I decorated our tree and cooked a beautiful holiday dinner, and we exchanged gifts and hopes for the new year. We were praying for a return to normal lives where we could go out in public without risking serious illness and death.
Christmas 2021
We had expected to be in Mexico for three years, until 2023, but things went in another direction. As Christmas 2021 approached, I announced my curtailment from Post. Because our packout was scheduled for the first week of January 2022 and my health and mood were poor, Christmas 2021 was the first (and so far, only) Christmas we did not celebrate. No Christmas tree, no gifts, not even a special meal. Our days were filled with packout preparation and culling our possessions.
We cancelled a holiday trip we’d planned to San Diego for January and set our focus entirely on getting us, our new cat, our two cars, and all of our stuff safely back to Virginia.
And that brings me to the three most recent Christmases of our FS life during my domestic tour and onward training — all of which have taken place in our rental house in Alexandria, Virginia.
Christmas 2022
As my stepmom had been diagnosed with terminal cancer in summer 2022, I went to the west coast for Christmas for the first time in eight years.
While I was gone, V caught COVID back in Virginia and quarantined himself in our house alone. I had decorated the tree and the house so everything looked nice, but it probably wasn’t a very fun holiday for him. We made up for it with a fun Orthodox Christmas in January (and Santa brought V an iPhone 14 Pro Max to finally replace his sad iPhone 6)!
Christmas 2023
Otherwise known as possibly the most hectic Christmas ever.
I had returned home from the west coast on Thanksgiving after several weeks staying with my dad and stepmom in Washington state. My stepmom had passed away in mid-November. So I had about two weeks in Virginia to Christmas shop, wrap, decorate the house, and cook and bake before flying back out for the funeral. I was also working full-time on my international parental child abduction portfolio, doing overnights at work on the Israel-Gaza task force, and helping my dad with her arrangements and estate.
We buried my stepmother the week before Christmas. Most of the weeks before and after Christmas were just a blur, between caretaking, traveling back and forth between coasts, and planning the funeral. Evidently I was too tired to even write about it for the blog, but my dad did join us for Christmas for the first time, flying back east with me just days after her memorial service.
During the same period of time I was on the west coast, my east coast family also had a lot going on. My stepdaughter A finished grad school, lost her maternal grandfather, and V was hospitalized twice with kidney stones.
So when my dad and I flew into Dulles, I was in a whirlwind of trying to catch up with everything. I felt like I was dragging my poor dad around on basic errands like grocery shopping, when all we both wanted to do was sit in one place and not move. But we still spent a beautiful time together as we tried to cope with our losses, support each other, and calm down our over-taxed nervous systems. (While enjoying some wonderful food, of course.)
Christmas 2024
All the pictures in this post are from our most recent Christmas, and the Orthodox Christmas celebration with my stepdaughter D that followed right after the New Year. Unfortunately A got sick and was unable to travel to us, but we were grateful to have the visit from D shortly after my dad left and spend that special holiday time together. D is busy in college in Tennessee, and hadn’t come to our house since 2022, whereas A lives one state over in North Carolina, is done with school, and we can get to each other more easily.
We are so grateful that this past Christmas was so fun and memorable. I will cherish it and look back on it fondly. It was an excellent way to tie off our unexpected three-plus years stateside during this crazy FS life.
We’ve now entered uncharted territory. We have no idea what Christmas 2025 will bring—will we stay in Burma or go to Thailand or elsewhere? Will we have visitors? How will it feel to have another hot, muggy Christmas in southeast Asia?
And as for Christmas 2026, we don’t even know what country we’ll be calling home. Will we be back in the U.S. for more language training? Or heading straight to an English-speaking post after Burma and home leave? Only time will tell.
But what we do know is we aren’t bringing our Christmas ornaments – which I consider irreplaceable – to Burma as long as its civil war is still underway. They will be safe in storage here, because I always pack them away most carefully after holidays that directly precede a PCS move.
And we know that Christmas in the coming years will look different from those of the past. Still, we’ll do our best to carry forward familiar traditions —whether it’s hanging stockings, decorating cookies, making my Christmas Eve lasagna, or simply celebrating with the community we’ve embraced. Whatever we manage to do to make Christmas feel like Christmas in the Foreign Service will be enough—because home is wherever the heart is.
Collecting Postcards 