Christmas while traveling: Our ritual for holidays
Christmas – the festival of love and contemplation. But how do you celebrate when you are far away from family and friends? For us, Christmas while traveling is a small challenge every year, but also an opportunity to create our own traditions. With our „Sloth Christmas“, we have developed a ritual that sweetens the holidays for us, no matter where we are in the world.
Our ritual: Sloth Christmas
It’s important for us to keep a little bit of coziness and a feeling of home during this time – and that’s exactly why we have a sloth Christmas every year. Sloth Christmas – what does that actually mean? It’s simple: it’s our day of total relaxation. Here’s how we organize it:
Preparation is everything
Shortly before Christmas, we try to find either enough sun for our solar system or a power connection for our Unimog Mambo. Then the most important preparation begins: cooking. Our traditional Christmas dinner is beef roulades and cake. Everything is prepared and pre-cooked the day before so that we don’t have to do anything on Christmas Eve – except enjoy.
The Christmas atmosphere in the Unimog or, as this year, in the Cabana:
Monika makes sure that there is a real Christmas atmosphere on the road. She has secretly „smuggled“ some Christmas decorations into the Unimog, and essential oils spread the scent of a fir tree. As an absolute Christmas freak, she has been playing Christmas music for weeks – and this ensures that the right mood is guaranteed.
The big day:
We make ourselves comfortable and watch our favorite Christmas movies. The prepared food makes us feel at home – enough roulades and side dishes for the whole day! Thanks to video calls, we are connected with family and friends and can laugh and share memories together, even if we are thousands of kilometers away.
Celebrate together with other Overlanders:
Every now and then you meet nice travel buddies with whom you can share the festivities. Particularly practical: in countries like Chile, there are WhatsApp groups that travelers can use to arrange Christmas get-togethers.
Christmas the way we love it
Christmas on the road may be unusual at first, but it also offers the chance to create new traditions, make friends and experience the festive season in a very special way. Sloth Christmas has become a permanent fixture for us – a time to relax, enjoy and pause, no matter where we are.