Escaping Your Holiday Weather
I grew up in south Texas, and for me, December was always a time when I looked at all the snow on television specials and wondered what it would be like to see it in real life. These days, I still live in an excessively warm climate, and snow, even in the depths of winter, is simply non-existent for me. I have never had a white Christmas, and frankly, I’ve felt kind of cheated because of it. I don’t know what it’s like to make a snowman, and I’ve never had the opportunity to be on the losing end of a snowball fight.
On the other hand, I have friends who live in Montana, and who are pretty much snowed in from November straight through until March. For them, the holidays bring dreams of places like Miami, where going out and doing things in December is not a complete impossibility. They’ve even talked about going much further south, to some exotic island where they could possibly swim in the winter. The climate I live in seems like a dream come true for them. They are completely fed up with snow.
Changing your holiday weather scene can be a great way to refresh your feelings about the holidays, especially if you have kids and they’re bored with the same old thing year after year. Traditions are great, but it’s also nice to find new ways to enjoy the most special time of the year. One benefit of traveling in late December is that many hotels and resorts (especially in warm areas) drop their prices to rock bottom, trying to encourage people to visit during the slowest period of the year. If you wanted to go someplace to swim, you might find that you and your family have the beach all to yourselves, which is nice. Many resorts put on a full Christmas dinner as well, so you can enjoy all the comforts of a traditional dinner, without having to wash the dishes.
As for our predicament, this year we have made plans to go up into the mountains for Christmas, where there is snow for more than half the year. This means we will definitely get to make snowmen! Okay, so it’s not a traditional Christmas to be in a hotel in a mountain resort, but it has made me more excited about the holidays than I have been since I was a kid, so for me it’s totally worth it. It doesn’t have to be like this every year — I just want to do it at least this one time, and we’re only going for a few days, so there will still be time to get back and do all the obligatory family stuff with grandparents and cousins. Who knows, if this works well, maybe we’ll do it again next year. And the next. And the next.
Going on vacation for the holidays can be a brave move, especially if it means that you and your immediate family will be separated from the rest of the family during the last week of December. But the holiday season gets a little bit longer every year, it seems, so you can easily make plans to pack up the kids and get a break from the weather, and still get back in time for Christmas dinner. Alternatively, you could go away on the 26th and spend a few days away then. There’s also the possibility that this will be the start of a yearly custom, taking off a few days after Christmas to have a break from the mayhem before the New Year’s celebrations get under way. We are certainly looking forward to our little mini-vacation, and I’m hoping that it’ll be the beginning of a new holiday tradition for us.
