I was trying to think about the 1st time that I spent the holidays away from my parent's home and I guess it was when my husband was in the military. Actually, I think the first time I spent Christmas away from home was the 1st Christmas that my husband was deployed. We pretty much moved Christmas that year and I didn't do anything on the day of that I would normally do. I had put up a Christmas tree but I spent the day on my own.
Everyone told me to just go home for Christmas and celebrate the same as I normall would regardless of the fact that my husband was deployed. But I just couldn't fathom doing that. And I guess the fact that we didn't have kids gave me the option to "celebrate" however I chose. It just didn't seem right to me to celebrate the day when I knew that he couldn't. And I felt like it would be that much more obvious if I went home. There would be an empty chair where he was suppose to be sitting and everyone else would have their own family unit in tact while I was the only there who was on my own, so to speak.
That year, I left the Christmas tree and all of the other decorations up well into January. We celebrated Christmas after he returned home from overseas. It wasn't quite the same but it was still much better, in my opinion, than celebrating it without him.
How did you deal with your first Christmas away from home or the 1st Christmas when your soldier was deployed?
