It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

Buckle up

Dec 18, 2024

Eeeesh. What a 12 months that was. I’ve spent the last few weeks sick, and am closing out the year with a remastered version of 2022’s Christmas essay, along with a bumper pack of tinsel-covered Tweets. Enjoy!

Christmas is upon us. Time to be with family, for elaborate meals with all possible configurations of trimmings, and promised piles of presents for your kids—even the naughty ones.

But before all the joy, an unassailable beast blocks your path forward—holiday travel. The year’s final boss battle, the ultimate hurdle to overcome before arriving at the promised land of non-stop food and long stretches spent in boxfresh pyjamas.

Travel is the necessary evil of the holiday season, and—depending on where you’ve chosen to live—you might have quite the trip on your hands. I envy those who boast of a sub-sixty-minute jaunt to see both sets of grandparents at this time of year. We’ll fly from Barcelona to the UK, then later take a train from Manchester to Dorset and hope everything runs on time. Many cite Die Hard as the ultimate holiday movie, but Planes, Trains and Automobiles will always hold a special place in my heart, after spending over 15 years making Christmas manoeuvres of my own.

For the uninitiated, or those who need a refresh (the movie is only to be streaming on Paramount+, which feels like a crime against humanity at this time of year), Steve Martin plays Neal Page, an ad executive stranded in New York City two days before Thanksgiving. Around the movie's mid-point, after a diverted flight, a broken down train, and an overcrowded bus ride, Steve Martin arrives at St. Louis Airport and decides to try his luck with a car rental. One iconic scene—in a movie filled with many—sees him taking the transfer bus to the parking lot and discovering an empty space where his rental is supposed to be. He treks back to the rental desk, through the snow, across the runway, and loses his shit on arrival.

There’s no excuse for blowing up on an unsuspecting desk clerk, but we’ve all been there. Everyone’s got at least one holiday travel disaster to tell. This essay was originally penned from the departure lounge of an overcrowded Manchester Airport, returning home after a week visiting family. A day of snow had predictably decimated the United Kingdom’s infrastructure, painfully unsurprising on an island you’d assume would be comfortable dealing with harsh weather conditions. Where’s Mr Plow when you need him? The status board was lit up like the world’s most terrifying Christmas tree, CANCELLED and DELAYED lights twinkling above, as welcome as your offensive uncle that arrives just in time to ruin the festive vibe.

It’s good to be at the airport on time. It’s even better to be there earlier. We’re still waiting on the scientific community to align around a peer-reviewed ideal airport arrival time. In the meantime, we all have our own beliefs, and dads get enough grief on the topic. Manchester Airport, easily the worst airport I’ve flown from—and that includes departing from a significant number of so-called “developing countries”— decrees that all passengers must arrive three hours early or risk missing their flight completely; thanks to their oversubscribed check-in gates, a skeletal security staff, and a shocking layout that has less than half the seats required and enough choke points to give a Counter-Strike map designer a run for their money.

You know what they say about kids: the days are long, the years are short, and the airports are always a disaster. But hold-ups occur whatever your mode of transport, and sometimes getting out of the door is half the battle. Exiting the house at the pre-ordained time, any time of the year, is reason for celebration. But in December? It’s a Christmas miracle. If you’re anything like me, you’ll spend the first chunk of your trip reflecting on the efficiency of your egress. Or inefficiency, to be more precise—maybe your youngest decided that 6:05 am was the perfect time for a meltdown, deciding that right now was the perfect time to search for Raphael—no, not that Raphael, not the classic Turtle style, not the one he’s been saying for over a year was his favourite; no, he wants the other Raphael, the one that up until five minutes ago he referred to as “the scary one,” the one from the 2014 movie, where Michael Bay was intimately involved in the character design process—“THESE TURTLES NEED TO BE GRITTIER, MORE REAL.” And whilst searching for said toy, your son may have dropped one of Raphael’s small plastic Sai into the big toy box, and wants you to rally a search party, at this moment, ten minutes before the taxi to the airport is due to arrive, to find a literal plastic needle lost in a toy-filled haystack.

Is that just me? That got a bit specific.

If your preferred method of holiday transport is the four-wheeled kind, you’re not turning up hours early, but you’re still measuring success in your own way. Are you going for the hallowed “zero stopper,” the holy grail of road trips, where all the right snacks and liquids are packed, the tank is sufficiently filled—and the kids are pre-drained—so toilet stops aren’t required, where you plan your departure in military fashion, hoping to maximise the chance of them napping for a significant chunk of the trip. Or are you optimising for time well spent, a few comfort breaks along the way, and a slight bending of the normal rules, where fast food and screen time become a distraction and a reward; a carrot dangled in exchange for good backseat behaviour.

It’s times like these you’re harshly reminded how much easier life was in the BC era (Before Children). They’re catalysts for chaos, inflating any minor inconvenience. Any surmountable issue sans kids—a delay that could happily be passed in an airport bar, for example—becoming a completely different beast when they’re present. Travel is tougher with kids. There’s no sugarcoating it. When we lived in San Francisco, we regularly flew back to the UK to see family, a short 11-hour hop over the entire United States and Atlantic Ocean. There was one particular flight that stands out, Padme on the cusp of walking by herself—arms raised, constantly seeking a helping hand, too wobbly to make it on her own, but too determined to do anything but try—where we spent the entire flight doing hundreds of laps around a Boeing 747, a mile-high re-enaction of bipedal Nascar race, bringing equal amounts of anger and glee to the passengers we passed again, and again, and again, and again. And to think, you used to spend an entire flight plugged into a movie—your only worry was what would be the best thing to fall asleep to.

There may be a light at the end of The Tunnel. My kids are old enough now that we can adopt the 2-2 formation—kids in front, parents behind. Between an old iPod, a stacked iPad, and a Nintendo Switch, they transform into a relatively well-behaved duo, keeping themselves entertained with minimal outbreaks. I’m holding out hope this is a bellwether on future travel trends and a destination all parents are heading towards.

That’s me, signing off for 2024. This year has been a hard one, but I have high hopes for 2025. Sending you all the best for the holidays, hoping you and your family have a wonderful few weeks together, and godspeed and good luck for whatever travel lies ahead of you.