I heard this song during a drive to work one morning. At first, it made me feel pretty depressed. I haven't been home since the end of July and don't plan on going home until... I'm not even sure.
We haven't been home for the holidays since 2006. The past couple Christmases we've braved the holiday travel traffic to drive 24 hours from our house upstate to my Nana's condo in Fort Pierce, FL. Originally it was because my grandfather had gotten too sick to travel, but even after he passed away in March of 2008, we continued to go, craving the warm sunshine and cold beers that Christmas Day has come to mean. Now, in the living room of my sparse Charlotte apartment, my brother cooking bacon on a too-small skillet and the Yule log flickering from the TV screen, I'm really beginning to think that the song is bullshit.
Not one to call Christmas songs out for being bullshit, I'm adjusting my position. The song is assuming that home means only a concrete place, something that is fixed in the foundation of a house that has been in a family for years and years and years. But when I think about what home actually means, I know it's less of a place and more of a feeling. So whether it's pouring rain in Charlotte and we're sitting on the floor for lack of adequate seating, or we're on the each cracking Coronas, "Home for the Holidays" really just means wherever we happen to bring our hand-knit personalized stockings and holiday special edition twelve packs.
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