'I learned it was okay to create new traditions': A migrant's Christmas away from home
I have been very lucky to be embraced by a variety of Irish families over the past few years, and I can only wish the same for other people in a similar situation as myself. Photo: Imasha Costa
This will be my fifth Christmas away from home, away from my family, away from my mother and my brother.
The weeks leading up to the festive period have always made me homesick. I miss the joy that my mother would bring with her smiles and the hidden candy canes under our pillows after we attended the midnight Christmas Mass.
She would always leave the house later than us to go to church because she was busy hiding the sweets under our pillows and leaving our presents on our beds.
I moved to Cork for college when I was 19. I had hoped that I would be able to go home to see my family in Bahrain during the Christmas break, but I did not have the funds to spend on tickets and I had only just finished my first semester in a country that was new to me.
And so, it became routine, to not go home during Christmas. But that did not mean I spent it alone.
Since my first Christmas away, I have been adopted by one Irish family per festive period. I grew to love and embrace the traditions that they had set and learned what it was like to have an Irish Christmas.
I did not expect Irish people to be as welcoming as they were to me, to welcome me, a stranger into their home, because they did not want me to spend Christmas alone.
My first Christmas away, in 2019, I spent with the family of a person I did my degree with. I was a bit confused; I didn’t know how an Irish Christmas worked and that there would be a very, very big dinner.
We started the festivities on Christmas Eve, there was an endless list of Christmas movies being played on the RTÉ player which included Love Actually, Elf and my own personal favourite, The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, while we were on the sofa with a big fire on.
I remember feeling very cosy and having a huge blanket wrapped around me as we lulled ourselves to sleep. What I did not expect was the big dinner the next day, and that it was going to be had at around 2pm—a complete culture shock to me.
The table was set, tunes were blaring from a speaker, and we all were very excited to dig into the turkey. It was then I realised that having a ton of food at the table was an important part of the entire celebration of Christmas for that family.
I also realised that Christmas celebrations in Ireland do not have much of a religious aspect in some households and that some families don't attend Christmas masses. That was something that I did not fully understand until I read up about Ireland’s history with the Church and discovered the Mother and Baby Homes scandal and the abuse of children within Catholic schools and churches.
But the best part of my first Irish Christmas was that it was not a requirement to wear something fancy to the dinner. It was fine to wear your pyjamas at the table. I did still wear a very pretty dress.
When I celebrated Christmas with my family, we always wore our Sunday best for dinner. Growing up in Bahrain, Christmas is not a public holiday and there were times when my mother would be working late into the afternoon and she would have no time to cook up a big dinner.
So, it was that one time of the year when we would dress up and eat out at a nice enough restaurant and then go shopping for Christmas presents after that.
The second Christmas away, in 2020, was spent with a lovely family who have always had at least one new person come to their home during the festive period.
This time it was much cosier and more filled with life. I was in shock when I got endless amounts of presents from them, and I was treated as if I were a part of their family.
I remember walking into their house on Christmas Eve and seeing a pile of presents with my name attached to it. I was shocked, as I had never gotten more than one present with my family, and they were mainly books that I would re-read all the time until the next Christmas.
I realised this was a family that showed their love by showering their family members with tons of presents, and they made me feel a part of theirs by doing the same.
I had a few presents for the family themselves, much of it was food and wine—things that I knew were going to be used during the day itself.
Christmas 2021 was then spent with another family, a friend of mine.Â
This one was fun, we had matching Christmas jammies, and the dinner was actually being made by my friend, and it was had very late in the day. It was the last Christmas I spent as a college student, who was working two jobs.
I loved every moment I spent with all the families that adopted me for those three Christmases, but I was also conscious that I needed to start making my own traditions here in Ireland, as a migrant away from home.
I celebrated Christmas twice in 2022. One with my partner’s family and the second with my friends—people that I call family.
It was Friendsmas. A dinner was cooked although I was banished into the corner of the living room because I was in the way of my friend who was a much better cook than I was.
And I realised I did inherit a few traditions from the Irish families that I spent Christmases with, and I brought some from home as well.
We went shopping on the day to get all our bits organised, instead of a turkey we had a chicken and so many spuds were bought that we nearly broke our backs trying to carry the shopping back to my house.
Several potato-based dishes were made, and brussels sprouts were an unwelcome addition as we expressed our distaste for them. This was a similar sentiment shared by the other Irish families that adopted me in the years before that.
We pulled several Christmas crackers, and so many bad jokes were made. We stacked our presents under our tiny Christmas tree, and we played some Pentatonix Christmas songs.
We had a buffet-style serving, the table was set and I wore my most comfortable outfit for the night.
Instead of buying presents for every single one of us at the table, we had Secret Santa, we stuffed ourselves before we watched a film and then almost conked.
My favourite part was that this was the time we made our traditions, and as a migrant away from home, I grew to love the celebrations that we had in my house, with my friends.
And the latest addition for us was bringing a lemon pressé from Lidl that we finished within the hour. We are bringing it back again this year.
The Friendsmas also reminded me of the joy that my mother created each Christmas when we would put up the tree and the crib and she would sometimes make us a massive pot of biryani—instead of having a turkey at the table.
I learned it was okay to create new traditions as we went along, and I learned that it was okay to be away from home during the festive period, away from your own family.
This will be the fifth time that I have been away from my family and now I am well used to it.
We are doing Friendsmas again this year, only now we have more company and much more food.
We are so excited about it that we started planning for it three months in advance. We have a Google document for our dinner shopping list and presents were sorted for the big day.
We are celebrating our Friendsmas a week before the actual day, but it is the one time of the year that I always look forward to. And I hope we can keep doing this for as long as we can.
The big dinner with a big chicken, presents, hot whiskeys and of course a Christmas movie and a nap.
And I know it is not just myself that will not be able to go home for Christmas this year—there are thousands of migrants and international students who cannot afford to fly home twice a year, let alone once a year.
According to data released by the Higher Education Authority (HEA) this year, the number of international students attending Irish universities across the country in 2022/2023 climbed to a record high of more than 35,000—nearly one in seven of all students.
The country, according to the Central Statistics Office (CSO), saw over 141,000 immigrants in the 12 months to the end of April this year.
Of those, 29,600 were returning Irish citizens, 26,100 were other EU citizens, and 4,800 were UK citizens. The remaining 81,100 were citizens of other countries, including almost 42,000 Ukrainians.
The festive period is where I feel the most homesick. It seems as if it comes out of nowhere, but actually, it always arrives at that exact time in the middle of November.
I have been very lucky to be embraced by a variety of Irish families over the past few years, and I can only wish the same for other people in a similar situation as myself.
While the country has seen an influx of immigrants and international students in the past few years, there has also been a rise in anti-immigrant sentiment in Ireland.
Following what has been labelled as ‘Black Thursday’—the riots that broke out in Dublin in November—there is a feeling among migrants that maybe they are not welcome into an Irish person’s home anymore. But it could just be because they feel afraid.
In my opinion, the Irish people that I have met are some of the most welcoming people ever, and I believe they will continue to do so, even with the current atmosphere.
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