EDDi Extra: Holiday Special
Yes, it’s that time of year...
Dear subscribers
In keeping with the season, this EDDi Extra is holiday themed. Dr Stephen Whitehead offers some thoughts on going ‘home’ for Christmas - a psychological survival guide for ‘re-entry’.
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GOING ‘HOME’ FOR CHRISTMAS?
WE HOPE YOU CAN FIND IT
By Dr Stephen Whitehead
Yes, dear international school teacher, it’s that time of year again.
You are ‘Christmas Concerted’ to exhaustion: there is no way you could raise your voice for yet another chorus of ‘Good King Wenceslas’; the blinking fairy lights in the staff room have given you migraine; and your ‘goodwill to all men’ never recovered after the staff Christmas party.
But hey, look what’s ahead: – Christmas ‘Back Home’.
Flights are booked, your bags are (mostly) packed, and mum and dad have promised you a ‘real Christmas dinner’ - which your mother has been planning since September. No need to pack your sun cream and shorts, last time you checked your home country was experiencing “the worst storms of the century” and they look set to welcome you back. In which case, your hoped for ‘White Christmas’ is going to be delayed for yet another year.
Your Christmas Day Facebook page won’t be showing photos of you sledging, but it will be showing photos of you with your family, party hat on, crackers waiting to be cracked, roasted turkey waiting to be carved, hyper-manic children, and Aunty Liz already succumbing to her fifth glass of sherry.
Christmas is a cultural anomaly. We are supposed to love it, and maybe we do, which begs the question why do many of us view its inevitable approach with something close to dread?
Partly it is to do with unrealistic expectations, partly it is because family dynamics can be less than joyful, and partly is it because with 21st century life already stressful enough, the obligations surrounding Christmas are less the icing on the Christmas Cake and more the straw that broke the back of the camels carrying the Three Kings to the Manger.
For Nomadic Global Citizens (such as the international school teacher), there is an added dimension, which is that in the twelve months since last Christmas a lot has changed, not least you.
Christmas is laden with powerful memories. It is mixed with potent cultural expectations of joy and family togetherness, all reinforcing one’s sense of belonging, sense of self. But your identity has changed, even while your memories may remain strong. You are not the same person, and nor are your loved ones. And memories cannot be trusted. We are all in constant flux, and none more so than the 21st century Nomadic Global Citizen. For the typical NGC, home remains a persuasive signifier of who we were and who we think we still are.
When NGC’s return home after long periods living abroad, they have to adjust to a world that has moved on and which they’ve moved on from. What once appeared familiar, comfortable and inevitable about our home and country and remains so in our memories, is actually disappearing into the mists of time. Disconcerting unfamiliarity replaces the comfort of the familiar. Each visit ‘home’ confirms our growing suspicion that, in truth, we no longer have a home to go home to. It only exists in our imagination, not in reality. Sure, we can physically be back ‘home’, but we’ll always be strangers there, never quite fitting in as we once did.
Sociologists call this ‘reverse culture shock’ and it is very real. I’ve experienced it personally (one reason why I’ve only been back to the UK three times in a decade and never at Christmas), and I’ve known many overseas students experience it, especially Asians who’ve spent years studying and living in the West and then try and readjust back home in Taiwan, Hong Kong, or China. Reverse culture shock can strike anyone, even the most worldly-wise. Indeed, the US State Department devotes several pages of its website to the phenomenon, so US diplomats can be prepared for the “psychological, emotional and cultural aspects of re-entry”.
Of all the holiday periods enjoyed by an international school teacher, Christmas is the most dangerous.
But it is an illusion.
Home is just an idea in your head.
‘Our concept of “home” is built on these ideas of familiarity, routine, communication and identity. Home is more than a physical place in which we live. Home is associated with all the people, actions, feelings, emotions and cues that make us feel “at home”. Craig Storti, says the following: “The essence of home can be described in three elements: familiar places, familiar people and routines, and predictable patterns of interaction. These three elements associate the feelings of security, understanding, trust, safety and belonging.’ (US State Department)
As Craig Storti explains in his book, The Art of Coming Home, reverse culture shock has several dimensions and stages to it, but for international school teachers two aspects stand out.
The longer you are away from home and the greater your level of interaction with the overseas culture, so the harder it will be for you to fully re-engage with your home culture.
The greater the difference between the overseas culture and your home culture, the harder the process of re-entry back home.
International school teachers, by definition, inevitably get involved with their overseas culture. Why would they not? They are teachers and teachers get involved. It is what they do. And, as for differences between cultures, even those countries that are ‘pseudo-Western’, such as Singapore, remain decidedly Asian in essence.
But, perhaps the more experienced international school teacher who is better prepared for what she/he will face come Christmas Back Home. After all, this is unlikely to be the first time they’ll have experienced the disconnects of ‘cultural re-entry’. They will be prepared not least because they’ve gone through it all before. Their expectations will be realistic and their planning carefully done, making sure they don’t spend the whole two weeks with mum and dad, trying to sound enthusiastic about yet another game of monopoly. No, they’ll wisely factor in ‘pressure release points’; for example, by ‘doing the family rounds’, and maybe even a long weekend in a delightfully antiquated rural hotel, just to reconnect with the spirit of a ‘traditional Christmas’ before flying back to air-conditioning, crazy taxi-drivers, and a mega-city that never sleeps.
As for the newly minted NGC, the international school teacher in his or her first few years of expat life, they’re likely still navigating their way through original culture shock, never mind having to cope with reverse culture shock. For them, Christmas Back Home is a decidedly mixed blessing raising all sorts of risky issues, not least about whether or not to sign a new school contract come January.
And me? Well, I’ll be having my regular Christmas Dinner. Not in North Yorkshire, but in Chiang Mai, at the Shangri La Hotel. They even have a Father Christmas and Carol Singers. A two-hour long Christmas Celebration in Chiang Mai, then back home for another viewing of Lawrence of Arabia.
A perfect Noel. And a short one.
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