𝙃𝙤𝙡𝙞𝙙𝙖𝙮 𝘾𝙝𝙚𝙘𝙠 𝙄𝙣 🎄✈️

Christmas overseas can mess with your head in a way you never saw coming.

Back when I first started out, a lot of teams built in a break. You could grab a flight home for a week on the team’s dime. You could sit on your couch and pretend you were a normal person again for five minutes.

Now…more and more athletes are staying put. There’s more games, more practice and more budget restrictions. Coaches don’t really care that your family is sending photos of matching pajamas and the tree you helped decorate…ten years ago.

So you’re sitting in some apartment you didn’t pick, eating whatever the team handed you, scrolling your phone until your battery dies and your thoughts get annoying.

I’ve done Christmas abroad a bunch of times.

One year I was in Cairns, Australia where it was like 110 degrees with whatever the max humidity could possibly be. I ended up at a Christmas pool party with actual shrimp on the barbie. Christmas music was blasting, Santa hats were somehow involved, and the whole time I’m thinking I’m in Clark Griswold’s pool fantasy.

In the moment, I felt far away.

Later, I realized something…that day was a gift. I got to see how other people do the holidays. I got to step outside my little bubble and realize my version of Christmas is not the only version. That experience didn’t replace my traditions. It made me appreciate them more. It also taught me how to respect someone else’s.

Other Christmases had opposite vibes.

I once had Christmas dinner in Fayetteville, North Carolina at a Texas Roadhouse. It was not exactly a Hallmark movie. We had a back to back home and away on December 26th and 27th, Nothing says holiday spirit like rolls, peanuts on the floor, and the realization this was my festive moment.

And then there’s Europe.

The Christmas markets are unreal. Like genuinely ridiculous. Lights are everywhere and there is the distinct smell of food, cinnamon and whatever they’re pouring into all those little mugs. The streets looked like a postcard. It’s so beautiful. But can also be lonely as hell. Pretty does not automatically mean comfort.

You miss home. You miss your people. You miss the dumb little traditions you never realized mattered until they were gone. The hardest version is when you’re not just sad…you’re sad and alone. Ted Lasso nailed it when he said, “There is something worse out there than being sad, and that's being alone and sad.”

That’s a fucking line!

Because if you’re eating Christmas Eve dinner in a local’s home, even if you can’t pronounce half the food, you’re not alone.

That’s the part overseas athletes forget when the holiday blues hit. You can either sit in the apartment and let your brain spiral, or you can start stacking experiences.

Go for the walk through the market and say yes to that invite. Find the teammate who is also stuck and plan something fun. FaceTime your people, then put the phone down and step into the place you’re life. You do not have to pretend you are not homesick. You just can’t let homesick turn into self pity.

You got on that plane for a reason because you wanted different. You wanted uncomfortable. You wanted a life most people only talk about.

So if Christmas finds you overseas this year…do one thing that gets you out of your room. Do one thing that puts you around other humans. Do one thing that future you will remember.

Because one day you’ll be home again and you’ll miss parts of this too. Not the loneliness…but the fact that you once lived a life big enough to spend Christmas on the other side of the world…and you handled it.