This year, Santa Claus will find them on the high seas

The trouble with children is that eventually they grow up and go to school. Although this can provide a sense of relief at times -- Monday mornings, especially, when the school door closes and the term “blissful silence” suddenly makes sense -- it can also complicate travel plans.

Gone are the days when you can save a few bucks traveling off-season or flying midweek, or by taking a bunch of four-day weekends throughout the year instead of one long summer trip. As parents of school-age children, you are now among the tortured masses scurrying to airports and clogging freeway routes the day before any major holiday.

Some parents, especially those with small children, want to establish homey holiday traditions, want the kids to experience the family gathered around the same dining room table year after year and cannot imagine them opening their Christmas or Hanukkah presents anywhere but under their own roof.

My husband, Richard, and I were of that persuasion for the first six years of parenthood until we realized that if we were going to get any traveling done during the school year, we would not be home for the holidays. And because our immediate family lives within an hour’s drive, there was no going to Grandma’s house in Maine (and counting on Grandma to do all the food shopping). No, we were going to have to take the turkey and candy canes on the road ourselves.

This year, we celebrated Thanksgiving at Mammoth Lakes; on Christmas Day we will be on a cruise to the Mexican Riviera. Tradition be hanged.

The first trip came up by chance; generous friends offered us the use of their cabin. The Christmas trip, however, was long in the planning. I have made Christmas dinner pretty much every year since I was about 10, and frankly, kids or no kids, the thrill is gone.

So last Dec. 26, instead of just swearing to go away the next year as we had so many times before, our family made up our minds to take a cruise -- easy on all generations, no cooking at all, and who wouldn’t want to spend Christmas Day swimming with dolphins? Before we could talk ourselves out of it, we made reservations and put down deposits. (You have to do this early if you are cruising with children. Because Princess has a child center with limited capacity, only so many children are allowed on board, and holiday cruises are very popular with families.)

Some of our friends were surprised we would spend Christmas on a ship: What about Santa? What about Christmas Eve Mass? What about the tree and the stockings and all those traditions?

We assured them that Santa would be informed, precisely, of our whereabouts and that the kids would understand that “big presents” wouldn’t fit on a ship but little ones would. A small tree would be procured, stockings would be packed and Christmas Eve services would be onboard.

We viewed the Thanksgiving trip to Mammoth as a bit of a dry run. The friends who loaned us the house tipped us off that there is only one supermarket in Mammoth and it is not the place to be the day before Thanksgiving. So we packed the whole meal -- the turkey and all the trimmings. My husband’s sisters and brother-in-law brought pies and ham.

To avoid the holiday traffic, we made the five-hour drive on Tuesday evening. When it comes to travel with small children, I cannot recommend night driving highly enough; there’s little traffic and something exciting about starting a trip in the dark. We left around 7; for two hours Danny Mac and Fiona occupied themselves with coloring and connect-the-dot, and then they fell asleep. No fighting, no whining, no seat kicking, no demand for sweet snacks. And it was real bedtime sleep, as opposed to those midday driving-drugged naps that mean, upon arrival, they will be energized when you are exhausted and then up all night.

I also learned that it is worth the mild discomfort for me to sit in the back seat between them. Having Mama in the back was a treat (heaven knows why; I fall so short of their expectations most days) and prevented arguing and all those, “He’s touching me,” “No I’m not” issues.

I took my laptop with several DVDs, but the sound was not quite loud enough to compete with the hum of the road. (This did save us on the drive back -- snow made it impossible for us to leave Saturday night as planned, and holiday traffic made the trip much longer. A movie, even with imperfect sound, was a welcome diversion.)

From a tradition standpoint, Thanksgiving in Mammoth looked pretty similar to Thanksgiving in L.A. We made cut-out turkeys from construction paper, ate too much and watched Christmas movies. It was too snowy for a touch football game after dinner, but we went for many bracing walks and the kids learned how to ski and snowboard. Mammoth was glorious, in sun and shadow, and a huge snowstorm at the end of our trip left us feeling the boughs-hung-with-snow magic of winter. When we left, Fiona, who is 4 1/2 , asked if it was going to be Thanksgiving again very soon.

I told her no but that there would be Christmas, and we spent the first hour of the trip home imagining the ship and all its holiday splendors. We will still put up a Christmas tree at our house, though we probably won’t haul out every decoration we own. We’ll pack a few special ones -- the creche from my childhood, the stockings, the kids’ favorite Santa.

But we’ll also pack bathing suits and suntan oil and lots of books to read by the pool, and how festive is that?