CHRISTMAS: I Won’t Be Home for the Holidays

For Travelers, there is inevitably a moment when the exhilaration of discovery gives way to an acute sense of being a stranger in a very foreign place. As soldiers, diplomats and foreign correspondents know, that sense of displacement may be keenest at times of traditional togetherness and homecoming. Here, current and former foreign correspondents share some of their most memorable Christmases away from home.

MOSCOW, 1984

Christmas, 1984, was shaping up to be as gray and mirthless as the year novelist George Orwell immortalized in his tale of totalitarian society.

It was bitter cold, and the usually quiet routine of those days before perestroika had been upset by the Dec. 20 death of Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov, imposing 18-hour workdays on the few of us reporters left behind to hold down the fort in the dreary depths of winter.

Then as now, the holiday season in Moscow begins only in the last days of December. Russian Orthodox Christmas falls in early January--an event few dared to observe during the age of official atheism. Since the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, gift-giving and merriment has been transferred to New Year’s Eve.

Scrawny yolochki --New Year’s trees--appeared for sale only on Dec. 23, most of them damaged in transit and already losing their needles.

My husband, Ken Olsen, and I were determined to cling to some traditions for our first-ever Christmas far away from home. We ducked into one of the icy yards dispensing flattened evergreens as soon as the first batch arrived. The trees were so thin we bought two and lashed them together with twine to have enough branches to hold our ornaments.

We were wallowing in self-pity, remembering big family gatherings and watching wistfully as American friends headed home to the states.

In a half-hearted effort to cheer ourselves up, we invited over the few correspondents left in Moscow and a handful of Russian refuseniks--those denied permission to emigrate--who were curious what an American Christmas was all about.

I ordered a frozen turkey from an import firm in Helsinki, Finland, and a British friend who was returning to Moscow after covering Mikhail Gorbachev’s trip to London was bringing in Christmas puddings and other Western treats.

It was the sensation caused by Gorbachev’s London visit, when he first appeared to be the Kremlin heir-apparent, and the absence of then-leader Konstantin Chernenko at Ustinov’s funeral, that drew the eyes of the news world to Moscow on Christmas Eve. Reversing themselves, several American newspapers and magazines ordered their correspondents to stay in the Soviet Union, fearing Chernenko’s absence heralded an impending change in the leadership.

Ironically, it was our colleagues’ disappointment at being assigned to a death watch that caused our Christmas spirit to finally kick in. Sympathizing with those who hadn’t expected to spend Christmas separated from wives and children, we invited them to our celebration and scurried to whip up a bigger dinner and extra eggnog.

The “Marooned in Moscow” party expanded as we also rang up complete strangers sent in to substitute for vacationing correspondents, knowing they would otherwise spend the holiday alone. Vodka flowed freely and there were childish gifts all around, including toy Red Army missile launchers complete with plastic projectiles we fired into posters of the ruling Politburo.

When our friends and guests stayed until 5 a.m. to play silly charades and share Soviet jokes, we felt we had rescued something of the spirit of Christmas after all.