You know, it's at the holidays that I am most aware that I do not "belong" to this culture.
I've never been much of a "holidays" person - for years I worked jobs that were in 24/7 industries so, more often than not, I worked on holidays as if they were any other day (except for the double-time pay). I also lived for a very large part of my life in the Southwestern USA, a place were cities are spaced very widely. To have gone "home" for Christmas, for example, would have at one time meant a 2-day drive, doing 14 hours at 65mph for both days, just to get there. Assuming the weather cooperated. And that was before cell phones, so there was some risk involved in driving through that much lonely countryside alone in winter. And my family was not close - we actually used to try to find reasons to not go home to our parents' house. If we couldn't get out of it, we'd go, but then go out to "visit friends" for as much time as we could manage, just to not be there at the house. So, no, I've never been a big "holiday" person in that respect, the "family" thing.
Even in the States, though, at the winter holidays I would feel a bit sad. I tend to spend a lot of time reminiscing about my childhood at this time of year, (and the past in general) and how none of the places I knew as a kiddie are still in existence, and almost all of the people are gone now, too. But, as that saying goes, you can never go home anymore. People have always told me that the older I'd get, the less that stuff would matter. Hasn't worked that way for me, really.
So now Scotland is home. But we culturally don't belong here. There are a lot of similarities between here and where I grew up (which was settled by the Scots-Irish, primarily). Which helps. And everyone has been wonderful and welcoming, but we really don't have the same set of referents. The Christmas Insanity here is a different flavor of Insanity than it was in the States. I've enjoyed seeing the new things, trying the new tastes, going to the new places to watch the new things (torchlight parades are cool!). But at the same time I miss a bit of how things were when we were in the USA. We would start our Holidays on Halloween - seriously, you could see our house from space. And it was fair game to start decorating for Halloween on October 15. And that flowed into Thanksgiving, when we would have friends over, and then do the epic Black Friday raids (all planned out carefully at least a week in advance). And then on into the "usual" Christmas stuff. Getting into the car in the evenings and getting cocoa at the drive through then driving around looking at all the decorated houses. Going to the same mall every year to see if they managed to get the mangey Christmas tree up straight this year (they never did). Getting a box of Hickory Farms stuff to eat while watching bad old movies. Ordering stuff from Swiss Colony to arrive the week before Christmas. Going to Solvang (a kitchy Denmark wannabe) to spend a couple of days shopping for silly little trinkets, and eating too many ableskivers. Having our traditional Christmas Eve pizza delivery. Being off work for the entire week (if not two weeks at that time of year) between the end of the Fall university quarter and the start of the Winter quarter.... We did some variation of that every year for, practically speaking, the Daughter's entire life. Now we don't have that, and we have not been here long enough to build traditions here yet. We did bring over our artifical tree and the ornaments we've gathered, one or two per year. And we did put it up and reminisce about "hey, do you remember when we got this one?" as we hanged them up. I've tried to kind of make small, daily traditions - a cup of tea and something seasonal homebaked every evening, that sort of thing. And we are going to go to the Christmas market in Edinburgh next week, like we did last year. So that's the start of a tradition.
But, again, we are not in-sync with the referents here, and so the holiday season here, with how people celebrate it, still doesnt' feel like "us." Until we've been here long enough to get our own traditions going here, I would imagine it'll feel like that. Some days I now feel like I'm kind of lost between two worlds - I would not feel at home in the USA, I don't think, anymore. But while I do consider Scotland "home", it's not the kind of grounded home where you instinctively know "how things are." I'd imagine that'll lessen with time. I can say that "I've seen the elephant", and that it hasn't been a bad thing, though.
I can only imagine how hard it would be for someone who was close to their family, and who had very strong traditions, and who is now on the other side of the world from them at the time of year when, emotionally, you want to be the closest to them. Bless you, hang onto them any way you can - internet, letters, phone calls. They'll be missing you, too.
