For expats, the holidays can be a reminder of all that’s missing

Published December 18, 2022

by Sarah DeVries

My first Christmas ever in Mexico was awful. Well, awful to me.

I’d traveled to my first Mexican boyfriend’s hometown of Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, with him for the week, ready for Christmas cheer and new adventures in a city with one of the coolest names I’d ever heard.

The first disappointment was the city itself. Yes, it was on the coast, but the water was too polluted for swimming, Pemex being the main local business. On the other hand, Salma Hayek is from there, and there was a place there with really, really good horchata. But other than that, the city’s charms seemed few and far between.

When my boyfriend and his sister made a big show of how hilarious they thought it was that I’d picked out off-brand cereal at the grocery store, and when his mom made a point of explaining to me that they were “actually white” (a confusing conversation because they were very much not), I began to suspect that things probably wouldn’t work out between us. But, hey, it was Christmas, and I was going to make the best of my very first one without my family, my culture or, I realized, any of the traditions I was used to.

The holiday season in Mexico is a different animal, and both newly arrived and long-term immigrants here often find themselves conflicted about how to handle what, for most, is normally a deeply meaningful time of year.

We search for a way to do this in a land where some of our own traditions are glaringly absent, and where we’re surrounded by traditions that we did not grow up with. We’re doing this often without much family, in a place where family is king.

As open and enthusiastic about one’s host country a person might be, it’s a lot harder to maintain that level of enthusiasm during the holidays if we just can’t help but feel that something’s missing.

I’ve been noticing this shared sentiment more often lately as I see questions from other expats coming up in common groups.

“Who’s going home for Christmas?”

“Is there literally any alternative to spending Christmas with my husband’s family this year if I just want us to have a small family gathering?”

“Do you get your kids Christmas presents, or just do presents on Three Kings Day?”

As a result, I decided to talk to different foreigners about their experiences with the holidays here. Below is a summary of what I found:

Read more […]