Holiday Travel

For many years, I did not travel during the major holidays – Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Year’s Day etc. – except locally around Washington DC, my hometown. I considered myself lucky to be able to avoid the road rage and general madness that seizes people at those times of year, with no need to pay attention to weather warnings or traffic reports.Since then, however, I’ve had the occasion to travel during and on holidays, and found that it is surprisingly relaxing and easy. A few years back, I spent the day after Christmas on a plane to Los Angles, heading for a hiking retreat in Malibu – the anticipation of a zen-like opportunity after the frenzied rush through Christmas was motivation enough, and flights were relatively relaxed and uncrowded. Similarly, I once had the pleasure of flying to the West Coast on New Year’s Day and watching the Rose Bowl Parade live on DirectTV from the plane as we passed over Pasadena.More recently, I’ve spent holidays doing a roughly 3-hour road trip to my family’s weekend home where the allure is more prosaic: sleeping in, cooking with friends, and working the way through a mound of books I keep collecting for reading in my elusive spare time. Travel to this location isn’t about the exotic or the adventurous, but rather simply reaching a place where the day-to-day fades away in favor of a break from the ordinary.And then this year I split my Christmas time, half with my family and half in Birmingham, Alabama. Part of the joy of this travel was getting to have two Christmases, in two places in the same day. And because of that, I took a lasseiz-faire approach to the day, a connecting flight notwithstanding. At the first airport, which was nearly empty, the small groups of people in the waiting areas were quiet and patient. At the second, there were angry travelers, irked with delays out of Charlotte-Douglas Airport in North Carolina – n.b. if you are determined to travel to small cities east of the Mississippi on major holidays, with limited connections and service, being prepared for problems and cancellations should be standard operating procedure. In contrast, hauling your child to the front of a line and screaming at the gate agent that he/she is ruining your kid’s chance to get his presents on time doesn’t really help.Perhaps it was the pilot wearing the Santa hat, or the baggage handler who took my luggage at the gate with a hearty “Merry Christmas!” or even the bag of chips the flight attendant handed me gratis when I couldn’t muster the exact change – but there was a certain charm and glee to flying that day. I’ll admit my flights connected seamlessly, and I was even moved to an earlier second leg when the first plane landed early. But even without that mistletoe magic, I’ll take traveling on a day when you can’t help but be happy and feel full of celebration.