Why I’m Happy to Celebrate Christmas in Istanbul

I encountered many sympathetic faces and voices when I told friends we’d be celebrating Christmas in Istanbul this year.

‘Won’t you miss your family? What will you do?’ They asked me.

I have plenty to do, and several of our expat friends are staying here in Istanbul this holiday season.

On Christmas Eve, we will attempt to recreate my husband’s family’s tradition of cooking an Italian Feast of the Seven Fishes with a lil Turklish flair, of course. I think we’ll have Turkish hamsi and midye tava on the menu. On Christmas Day, we will have a simple Italian-themed get-together with friends. 

One of the traditional Feast of Seven Fishes dishes - mussels and clams served over pasta.

I’m happy to just stay put this year in Istanbul and make new traditions with my husband and our friends.

So let’s recap what an expat Christmas entails normally entails for us in the U.S.:

Take a 10+-hour flight from Istanbul to NYC where we spend 2 or 3 days with friends and recovering from jet lag. Then, we take a connecting flight to Nebraska where we spend a week freezing our butts off with my family that I love and only get to see once a year. The upside is that I do get to eat good steak and cheap Mexican food in Nebraska. 

October 2012 - me with my mom and dad at home in Nebraska.

Then, we normally fly from Omaha to sunny North Carolina to visit the in-laws for a couple days. This year, we spent an afternoon on a boat, going to the kids’ games, making BBQ ribs at home and celebrating my husband’s and niece’s birthdays.

Our niece and nephew showing off their new Beşiktaş soccer t-shirts we bought them for Christmas.

October 2012 - celebrating Christmas with my husband's parents and his brother's family in North Carolina.

From there, we either fly or drive back with the in-laws to Pennsylvania for a few more days of Christmas cheer and proceed to visit more family in nearby New Jersey. Then, exhausted, weary eyed and now catching colds, we take the train to Penn Station in NYC. If we’re lucky, we get to spend another day or two catching up with friends in the city and stuffing our bellies with NYC pizza, Chipotle, Ramen noodles and good beer before we catch the 10.5 hour flight back to Istanbul.

I almost always brave the crowds and stop at Macy's whenever I'm in NYC.

And that my friends is how we’ve basically spent Christmases 2010 and 2011 in the U.S.

I love our families and I do genuinely miss them, but doing this kind of travel over a short span of time is truly exhausting! I don’t think anyone understands what it physically and emotionally takes to plane-hop from place to place. After coming down with bronchitis this past January, I vowed that we’d never travel to the U.S. during December – EVER!

That’s partly why we spent most of October in the U.S. this year for an early Christmas get-together with family and friends. My husband also had to renew his driver’s license in person.

We still had the same travel itinerary, but there was no pressure, no holiday madness at the airports, no congested roads and not much battling of the mass commercialism that is a U.S. Christmas (unfortunately). It was the ideal answer to our expat holiday woes!

In Istanbul, we’ve decorated our small Christmas tree. We’ve been listening to Christmas songs now and then, and I’ve done some holiday baking. It feels like Christmas to me. 

Plus, I just have to walk up the hill to see: Christmas in Istanbul’s Nişantaşı neighborhood

Our humble Christmas tree surrounded by my cookbooks.

This year, we’ll celebrate Christmas with our families remotely via Skype.

Will you be celebrating the holidays abroad or at home this year?