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For missionaries, the Christmas season conjures the usual holiday images, among the less traditional. Missionary kids from the tropics sing, “I’m dreaming of a green Christmas,” as they trudge through snow on their college campuses. Adults reminisce while adjusting to celebrating new holiday customs in a place thousands of miles from their native homes.

Separation from loved ones is the biggest challenge for many missionaries at this time of year. Kathy, a single missionary, confided, “I take vacation at Christmas each year and return to North America to be with my family. It’s just too hard to be away from home at Christmas,” Singles, couples, families, rookies and veterans alike especially miss their family during this time. Family members in the homeland also feel the absence of missionary sons, daughters, grandchildren and siblings.

While some, like Kathy, choose to return home for the holidays, missionaries who remain on the field also join “family,” even if they’re not blood relatives. Our TEAM Madrid family had memorable Thanksgiving dinners with all the fixings, served in the multi-purpose room of the MK school. This October, when our older daughter presented me her menu requests for Thanksgiving, I was aghast at the variety of dishes she requested. “But Mom,” Beth insisted, “all of these things are part of Thanksgiving memories for me.” She cherishes Thanksgiving in Madrid—an awesome potluck with her mission aunts’ and uncles’ homemade Snicker salads, sweet potato casseroles and mashed potatoes and gravy.

Another challenge missionaries face is adjusting to different holiday realities in the host country. One of my first-year shocks was realizing that it was business as usual on the fourth Thursday of November (US Thanksgiving Day). We were expected to attend our usual language classes that morning. In Spain, children write letters to the Three Kings, not Santa, and gifts come on the night of January 5 for children to open on Kings’ Day. New Year’s watch night services don’t end just after midnight—they end with churros (a deep-fried pastry) and hot chocolate at dawn. (The service doesn’t even start until 11 p.m.) In Venezuela, entire families gather to make the traditional hallacas, a mixture of meats, vegetables and spices wrapped in banana leaves. My kids called them “ah-yuck-as,” but they were considered a delicacy that appeared in every home and church dinner during the holiday season.

Over the years, our family holiday traditions were influenced by our host countries, and Christmas in this Wrobbel family now must include turrón, a Spanish candy that comes in 8-by-3-inch bars (or 20 x 8.5 cm. if you measure like the rest of the world). Ham replaced turkey as our traditional Christmas dinner because turkey could be difficult to find and expensive. Were we were truly Spanish, we would have roasted a lamb. Our four years in Caracas, Venezuela, bring memories of church and mission Christmas gatherings around the pool or at the beach.

But more than food and fiestas, the holidays bring missionary families unique opportunities for ministry. In countries where Christmas is celebrated, even people who aren’t usually interested in spiritual things are willing to attend special holiday programs or concerts. Our Madrid church does a float with a biblical message in the annual Kings’ Day parade, creating goodwill in the community by participating and giving candy to kids. The church also produced a living nativity scene in a park, and the school vocal ensemble that we directed sang carols to draw people closer and to give a message in song.

Another ensemble Christmas ministry was the caroling party. We visited each member’s home and sang carols in the stairwells of Madrid high-rises where the sound echoed. Parents invited neighbors to their home for coffee or dinner and to hear “Rachel’s group” sing, an opportunity for evangelism or pre-evangelism. Our neighbors asked me every December when the kids were coming to sing.

During 20 years of international living, we celebrated Christmas in four countries on three continents. Although we were far from “home,” we also developed a sense of home in each place as we celebrated with spiritual family, both national and missionary, and made some of their customs our own.

As you celebrate the holidays this season, pray especially for missionaries who make their homes far from “home.” This can be a lonely but especially busy time of year. To help remember your missionaries, consider incorporating some custom from their adopted homeland into your Christmas celebration.

May you feel at home this year wherever you are when you remember the Lord’s incarnation!

Karen Wrobbel is assistant professor of education at Trinity International University in Deerfield, Ill.