For Some at Christmas, ‘Home’ Is Still Mom’s

“We always go to your mother’s for Christmas. For once, why don’t we stay here?” laments a husband to his wife.

Growing teary, she responds, “it won’t seem like Christmas unless we’re home.”

“But honey,” he says in a weak voice. “This is home.”

Come Dec. 24th, where will you be? You may be an adult, perhaps parent to a couple of kids, but chances are good that you’ll be packing up and combatting crowds at the airport to be at the home of your childhood on Christmas Eve.

Breaking from tradition is a tough transition to make.

“I’m dutifully going home to my mother in Florida,” says Basil Talbott, 51, a Washington political reporter.

“I still go to my mother’s house in Denver,” says Jan Miller, 40, a Dallas literary agent. Her longtime companion accompanies her.

More Complicated With Time

“It gets more complicated as the years go on for everyone to meet at the same time, but we have always gone to Denver. For my mom, Christmas is a very big deal--you are there, period.” Miller is joined by her twin 37-year-old brothers and their families.

She talks about a couple of big book contracts she has pending in New York and suddenly sounds frazzled about the travel ahead. “Next year, I’m starting a new tradition and everybody is coming here. We’ve got this great house that sits empty on Christmas.”

Dorothea Wilson’s mother’s house, in Fort Worth, Tex., has rarely been empty on Christmas. Wilson, 49, transports her family from Bethesda, Md., to Texas, where she and her husband were born, met, and married.

Their two children, both in their 20s, can’t make it to Texas this year. So Dorothea and Sam are driving the distance themselves, which means 23 hours on the road.

Why make this grueling haul?

“Because that’s where I’m supposed to be,” explains Wilson, executive director of the American Society for Cell Biology. “And that’s where I want to be.” Her parents are 70 and 71; Sam’s parents are 83 and 90.

Wonderful Christmases

The year the Wilsons stayed in Maryland, Sam clearly longed for a Texas Christmas: “I’ll bet you my husband called home at least three times that day. Our Christmases there have always been so wonderful. Marvelous German chocolate cake, divinity fudge, pecan pie, smoked turkey--we’ve been there for almost every year of the 32 years we’ve been married.”

Boston columnist Margery Eagan is not only wooed by her mother’s “great cooking.” She can’t stay away from the holiday magic that takes hold in the old family home. With toddler daughter in tow, she and her husband, reporter Peter Mancusi, are flying to Cape Cod as they always do.

“My mother has an extravaganza,” says Eagan, 34. “She puts angels everywhere, about 250 of them. There’s a 9-foot Christmas tree in our living room decorated with eggshells hand-painted by my grandmother in 1906. Boughs of holly on the mantle and wrapped around the staircase. Little lights on all the house plants, a Frosty the Snowman--my mother just goes crazy. It’s like we’re all 12.”

Eagan sighs and says it’s time to grow up. “We’re gearing up to have Christmas in our house next year. We’re getting up the courage to tell my mother. It’s time for a generational transition. We have just bought this sprawling, crumbling Victorian in Brookline, complete with four fireplaces.”

She laughs when reminded that will mean competing with her mother’s great cooking. “We had the whole family to our house this Thanksgiving, and my mother brought all the food in the trunk of her station wagon--a 30-pound turkey and all the fixings. Hopefully, next Christmas she’ll bring the tenderloin.”

Family Conflicts

Leslie Westreich, a Washington psychiatric social worker who specializes in couples’ therapy, says the process of returning home for the holidays can “pull on family conflicts.”

“Some adults who return home do it out of guilt. They go, not out of pleasure, but out of a sense of obligation,” says Westreich. “Those who go with great anticipation are people who have real feelings of love and connectedness. They go out of desire, not guilt.”

Westreich feels it is “very healthy” at some point for growing young families to depart from tradition. “And it’s very, very important that the families of origin allow that and support that. An ideal solution in a bonded family is that the older people come to the new family’s home.

“This can be very healthy because it’s a validation of the new family. It signifies a moving on into the future.”

Jill Pufki, 42, made the break 2 years ago. She and her husband and their two teen-age children now have their own Christmas in Richmond, Va., away from the grandparents in Lancaster County, Penn.

Missed Birthday, Too

“It was awful to tell my mother, especially since my mother’s birthday is Dec. 29 and we wouldn’t even be there,” says Pufki, a part-time nursery school teacher. “But at some point you have to realize, ‘Hey, I’m a grown up.’

“My parents made it easy for us because they had done the same thing when they had a young family. Now we look forward to Christmas in Richmond. We’ve got so many friends here and the children have so many friends, we’ve really developed a second family.

“And I want my children to feel this is home, rather than Grandma’s house is home.”