The Holidays are always a very special time of year no matter what you celebrate, but as an adult going home to your parents or grandparents it is quite different than when you were a kid.

This list that I came up with is from the perspective of someone who does not live in the same town they grew up in, and so you have to actually travel to get to your Holiday destination. I am a big believer in it being a totally different experience for you than say siblings who live in town.

Some of these are my own personal experience and some of are ideas from my friends, but all relatable I think.

  1. Everything looks so small-The house , the kitchen, your old bedroom everything. Of course as an adult you are bigger than when you were a kid, but talk a stroll around the old neighborhood and you will see.
  2. It always feels like 100 degrees indoors- My mom was always cold so the heat was usually on pretty high, plus then you pack all the grown siblings in the house and you are all hanging out in one room, it gets pretty toasty.
  3. You have to mingle with relatives you see every few years- My relatives are all great people, but what is hard as time goes by you have to constantly tell and re-tell your story about your job, where you live etc. They usually have a fairly good idea what you are up to, but just to be polite they ask you anyway. At times like that I wish I could just walk around with a sandwich board on me that explains it all.
  4. Married/Single Dating-Lucky for me my parents and siblings never gave me the hard court press about my dating life, but I have a few friends who would skip going home for the Holidays because of the constant badgering about their relationship status.  Then if you bring your significant other with you and staying at Mom and Dads where do you both sleep? To make it easy on everyone mainly your significant other get a hotel room.
  5. You rummage through memorabilia-This may be voluntary or involuntary. As you get older so do your parents and they may want to downsize. So since you are home they want you to take all your stuff that has been in the attic for years. Not so convenient if you flew there, but If you drove, lookout not only will you have a few tupperware containers form Mom, but boxes and boxes of junk you will just end up throwing in storage until the mood strikes you to go through it.

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