Living overseas away from your familiar culture and community is an incredible opportunity: rich with adventure, learning, and the chance to grow in unexpected ways. But there are seasons and special moments that can tug at your heart, especially when meaningful holidays roll around. For many American or Canadian expats, Thanksgiving can be one of those times. And for others, religious and cultural holidays like Christmas, Eid, Ramadan, Lunar New Year, Diwali, or Passover may feel very different away from home.
What makes expat life unique, though, is that you don’t just leave holidays behind, you adapt your traditions and adopt new ones along the way. You build community. You redefine what celebration means. You create memories that aren’t limited by geography.
As an expat, I’ve found joy in unexpected places. One holiday I especially look forward to is the Holy Month of Ramadan, a spiritually rich time filled with generosity, community meals, and a slower rhythm of life. It is a holiday that I didn’t celebrate growing up, but I am so thankful that I’ve had the opportunity to learn about this holiday.
Whether you’re celebrating Thanksgiving abroad this year or preparing for a holiday that holds personal or cultural significance, here are some strategies to help you make the most of expat holidays:
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- Teaching Abroad with Kids: A Practical Guide for International School Teachers and Expat Families
- Teaching Couples and Families Abroad: Navigating International School Careers Together
Tips for Celebrating Holidays Abroad
1️⃣ Communicate & Connect
One of the first things I learned living abroad is that everyone misses something from home, even if we don’t always say it out loud. When a holiday is coming up, I casually ask coworkers and neighbors if they were planning anything. More often than not, we were all in the same boat.
Some of my favorite expat holiday memories started because someone said, “We should do something!”
If no one else is marking the occasion, take the lead. Organize a cozy gathering in your apartment. Host a small potluck where everyone brings one thing that reminds them of home, bonus points if you swap recipes. Growing up, there were family recipes that I looked forward to enjoying at Christmas or Easter. I love that for my children, their holiday memories include the favorite family recipes from our family and from our found expat family.
Over the years I have loved introducing expats from other countries to holidays that my family celebrates. Through that, I have had the chance to reflect and share what the holiday means to me while learning about traditions from cultures around the world.
Community doesn’t just appear abroad — we build it together.
2️⃣ Simplify Your Traditions
There were years when I couldn’t find pumpkin pie filling or canned cranberries anywhere. I used to pack Christmas sprinkles in my luggage each August in preparation for making Christmas cookies because they weren’t available in my host country. It became a mission every summer where I would try to figure out how to find and pack details for each holiday that we’d celebrate during the school year abroad. Honestly… all the effort did was stress me out. The reality is: your holiday can still feel special, even if it looks a little different.
Try swapping in local foods or choosing just a few meaningful traditions to focus on. Maybe it’s a favorite family recipe or a movie you watch every year. Let yourself embrace “different” instead of chasing “perfect.” I don’t pack out Christmas sprinkles any more and if I can’t find pumpkin pie filling, it’s not impossible to make from scratch.
It’s funny, the things I once thought were compromises have become some of my most treasured memories. The longer that we live overseas, the more our traditions become less about replicating what my husband and I experienced growing up and more about what we enjoy as a family.
3️⃣ Explore Local Celebrations
One of the greatest privileges of expat life is that your cultural calendar expands. I’ve celebrated holidays I didn’t even know existed growing up, and each time, I’ve learned something beautiful about the people around me. Every fall, I look forward to celebrating Bonfire Night and I try to eat tteokguk for good luck to mark the New Year. A tradition I look forward to during the Holy Month of Ramadan is participating in food drives for those families who are struggling. These traditions and holidays are not my own, but I am so grateful to the friends I’ve made during my years abroad who’ve invited me to learn more about what is special in their life and family.
When you’re invited into someone else’s celebration:
- Show up with curiosity
- Ask questions
- Appreciate the symbolism and joy
You might discover new traditions or lessons that can become a meaningful part of your life. One of the best ways to build community is to support others when they celebrate holidays special to them.
4️⃣ Create New Shared Traditions
Your expat friends become the people you cook with, laugh with, and sometimes cry with when missing home hits hard. They become your found family.
Some of my favorite traditions were born from necessity:
- A “Friendsgiving” with mismatched dishes and too many desserts
- Family-friendly brunches on long weekends
- Camping trips in the desert where it’s very likely someone will get stuck and we’ll all hop out to help dig them out (it’s part of the fun!)
- Volunteer days that grounded us in gratitude
They weren’t the traditions or activities I started with, but they’re the ones I’ll carry with me forever.
Abroad, we blend what we love from home with what we love from here, and somehow the result feels even more special.
For Parents: Setting the Tone for Expat Holidays
Kids look to us to understand how to feel about the world around them. Even when we’re homesick or missing family traditions, we can help them see the beauty right where they are.
Some things that have helped us as a family:
- Letting our kids take the lead on planning and decorating
- Sharing stories from our own childhood; the “why” behind the traditions
- Creating new rituals that honor both our home culture and the one we’re living in
- Focusing on joy and connection instead of comparing everything to “back home”
One of my favorite parts of expat parenting is watching holidays through their eyes. Every year, my kids get excited to draw and color decorations for Halloween and Christmas. Those simple, imperfect creations bring a burst of holiday spirit into our home, and many have become treasured keepsakes from their childhood abroad.
Expat childhoods can be magical. As caregivers, we get to help shape that magic, wherever in the world we happen to be.
Final Thought: Home Is Where You Celebrate
Being an expat means learning that you don’t have to be home to feel at home. Holidays are about people, shared experiences, and belonging, and you can cultivate that anywhere in the world. I’ve discovered that holidays aren’t defined by the exact food on the table or the decorations we grew up with, they’re shaped by the people we gather with, the moments we slow down to enjoy, and the sense of belonging we create together.
Some of my favorite holiday memories now aren’t from the place I was born, but the places we’ve lived, like beach picnics with coworkers who became family, potlucks with foods from everyone’s cultural background, and traditions our kids helped invent.
Throughout our expat journey, now and wherever we land next, we’ll always bring a little bit of every home with us.
Because home isn’t a single place on a map, it’s a collection of communities, memories, and the love we build along the way.
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