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Home for the Holidays

Merry Curfew!

So: You've taken your last exam, turned in your last overdue library book, and bid your roomie farewell for a few weeks. The semester's over, and you are headed home to celebrate Christmas with your family.

It's wonderful to go home for the holidays, of course, but families often find that the college Christmas reunion has its own stresses and strains, especially if this is your first extended stay at home since heading off to school. In short, you've taken a huge step into independent adulthood, but your parents may not be so quick to recognize or honor that step.

Case in point: my friend Shelby, who came home from college flush with triumph. She'd aced her exams, and, with the money she'd earned at her work-study job, bought her parents and brothers groovy Christmas presents at a campus "alternative markets" fair.

Shelby arrived home enthralled and happy and somehow feeling decidedly different — only to be greeted with her parents' expectation that she would be home in bed by 10:30, as she had been six months before, as a high school senior. Shelby, of course, had gotten used to being mistress of her own manor, and she was flabbergasted that her parents still presumed to tell her what to do. Not that she wanted to stay out partying till 2 a.m. (though staying out till 11 or 12 seemed reasonable). Rather, she simply wanted her parents to see her as the adult she was becoming.

Don't be surprised if you and your parents have different visions of Christmas break. Your hope that they will treat you as a grown-up is entirely legit — but it's also understandable that many parents have trouble making the shift. And, let's face it, you're staying under their roof and it's within their prerogative to ask you not to come and go at all hours of the night.

Add finances to the mix and things can be even more complicated. Parents who are forking out big bucks to pay your room and board at college may quite rightly ask why you're blowing $200 on long-distance phone calls to your boyfriend. Indeed, parents who helped create your very body may dare to say something about your new tattoo.

Isn't There Any Way You Can Get Along at Home?

Can anything ease the tension? Thinking through some of the ways you might have changed and talking with your folks before you get home will help. If you let them know ahead of time that you've pierced your eyebrow, the ride home from the airport won't be filled with shocked silence or, worse, parental freaking out. Ask your parents if they expect you to abide by a curfew, and if they expect you to naturally resume all the chores you were responsible for last time you were under their roof.

It's also important to remember that you are not the only one who's changed. Your family hasn't remained frozen since you left for college; in your absence, they may have changed, too. Your younger sister may be exulting in having mom and dad's undivided attention, and your coming home might unsettle those new dynamics. Maybe your parents have turned your bedroom into a study. My mother moved when I was in college — I came home to a whole different town.

Other families may have experienced quite traumatic changes in just a few months. My across-the-street neighbors divorced the year after their youngest child left for college. Jason and Paula had been trying to hold their marriage together "for the sake of the children" for a decade — and once all the children were gone from home, their fragile bond collapsed.

Jason and Paula are not alone: The National Center for Health Statistics shows that even when the divorce rate in general has declined, divorce among empty nesters has increased.¹ If you return to a home that has been broken by divorce, you may find yourself thrust not into adulthood, but rather reminded quite forcefully that you are, and always will be, your parents' child, and their marriage will affect you whether or not you live with them.

There can be some great transitions, too. I remember very well the first time I took my mother out to dinner. It was winter break of my junior year of college — I had been working as a research assistant and felt flush. Picking up the check when mom and I went out to eat was a great way to act like an adult and honor mom.

Falling Out with Family over Faith?

Probably — hopefully — an eyebrow ring is not the sum total of the ways you've grown and changed in college. Perhaps you did not embrace Christianity until college, or perhaps your faith has been enlivened while away at school. If your folks are believers as well, they will doubtless be thrilled; but if your parents, or your high school friends, are not Christians, you may find Christmas a little awkward, to say the least.

The third Christmas after I became a Christian, I refused to go home. I came up with lots of excuses, mainly that I had a crushing amount of work to do. That was true, but I also had another reason for staying in New York. I wrote in my journal: It pains me too much to spend the day that celebrates the birth of my most precious Lord and Savior with people who do not recognize his lordship, and simply treat the day as an opportunity to exchange presents and sip eggnog.

I now cringe when I reread that snippet from my diary. My feelings had some glimmer of insight in them, but that insight was overshadowed by my myopia and pridefulness. I have come to see that my decision — while perhaps the best decision I could make as a relatively new Christian who was absolutely genuine in my faith — was immature, and was an outright failure of Christian love. For what is the best Christian witness — to stay self-righteously away, as I did that year, or to love your friends and family well by celebrating a holiday with them?

In December 1856, Charles Spurgeon preached a sermon on this theme. Newly converted young men, he said, came to him and wondered how they should behave when home for the holiday. "We are going home to see our friends, and here is the story some of us have to tell. 'Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for them, and hath had compassion on thee.'"

Go home, in other words, even if you are going home to pagans, or "cultural Christians." Go home, and tell the story, the Christian story, the story of what Christmas is really about.

How should you tell that story, asks Spurgeon? Not obnoxiously; not preeningly. "You are not to repair to your houses and forthwith begin to preach. That you are not commanded to do. You are not to begin to take up doctrinal subjects and expatiate on them, and endeavour to bring persons to your peculiar views and sentiments. You are not to go home with sundry doctrines you have lately learned, and try to teach these."

Rather, says Spurgeon, "Do not tell more than you know; do not tell John Bunyan's experience, when you ought to tell your own. Do not tell your mother you have felt what only Rutherford felt. Tell her no more than the truth. Tell your experience truthfully; for mayhap one single fly in the pot of ointment will spoil it, and one statement you may make which is not true may ruin it all. Tell the story truthfully."

C O F F E E  S H O P

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Your parents are used to being your parents, but you've begun to experience life on your own. Any questions? Any advice?

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Finally, when "you are at home on Christmas-day, let no one see your face till God has seen it. Be up in the morning, wrestle with God."²

If we begin and end our journeys home with wrestling and praising God, committing our time with our mother and father to our Father in heaven, we will be well on our way to having a merry, and holy, Christmas.