Celebrating Christmas While Traveling: 7 Tips for Families
From the Santa Years to the Teen Years (and Beyond)
“Where we love is home, home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.”
Although Malaysia is a Muslim-majority country, Christmas decorations are plentiful throughout Kuala Lumpur. This giant tree stood near the Petronas Towers, the world’s tallest twin towers.
Updated: October 4, 2026
I have been traveling for Christmas for most of my adult life. I’ve never lived in the same town as my parents and siblings, so for decades our holiday season has included a packed car, a long drive, or a flight to be with family. Even though we woke up at home on Christmas morning most years, we spent part of the season away.
Celebrating Christmas while traveling isn’t a new challenge for us. Taking the celebration on the road has taught our kids to adapt and enjoy the experience wherever it takes us.
So I know the knot in your stomach if you’re reading this in December with a trip coming up. Whether you’re heading to Grandma’s house, a ski resort, a beach, or another country, the worry is the same: “How do we keep Christmas feeling like Christmas when we’re not home?”
Here’s the short answer from a mom who’s done this with little ones, with teens, and now traveling full-time with two adult daughters and a teen: you can keep far more of your Christmas than you think. You just have to decide what matters and use your imagination.
The Year I Thought We’d Ruin Christmas
In 2021, we spent the fall in France, from September until about December 5th. Before we left, I was convinced we were about to take something away from our girls. No trick-or-treating in our neighborhood. No Thanksgiving in Williamsburg. No decorating the house the weekend after Thanksgiving like we always had.
“We’re going to ruin Christmas for the girls.”
I never said it out loud to Kevin, but I thought about it all the time.
I was wrong. We walked the Christmas market in Strasbourg, spent time in Paris, and visited Disneyland Paris during the Christmas season. When we got home in December, we decorated and celebrated like always. Our elf, Charlie, even arrived in the mail. He was a few days late because he “traveled” all the way to France looking for us before finding us back at home. We didn’t lose Christmas that year. We added to it.
Since then, we’ve spent Christmas in Kuala Lumpur (2024), celebrated a summer Christmas during a pet-sit in Melbourne, Australia (2025), and in 2026 we’ll be back in Kuala Lumpur, this time in our own apartment. Every one of those Christmases has felt like ours.
Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland Paris during the Christmas season, framed by a festive red-and-white flower bed.
Wherever You’re Going This Christmas
Most families celebrating Christmas while traveling aren’t crossing an ocean. They’re driving six hours to the grandparents, flying to a sibling’s house, or booking a cabin, a ski trip, or a resort for the week. The details change, but the problem doesn’t. You’re in someone else’s space, away from your own traditions, and you want the kids (and yourself) to still feel the magic.
For years, our own version of this was Williamsburg, Virginia. From 2012 through 2019, we spent almost every Thanksgiving there. We’d eat the Thanksgiving buffet at Captain George’s, go back to the hotel to watch the Cowboys play, and then spend the entire next day at Busch Gardens Christmas Town. We always stayed at least one night, but often two or three. It was how we kicked off the Christmas season, and it set the tone for everything that came after. (Our Williamsburg, VA Christmas guide covers what the area looks like during the holidays now.)
Everything we’re sharing below works at Grandma’s house, in a hotel room, at a resort, or halfway around the world.
If You’re Leaving in Days, Start Here
If your trip is close and you don’t have time to read everything, do these five things before you go:
Pick your family’s 2 to 3 non-negotiable traditions and pack for those first (Tip 1).
If you have little ones who still believe, pack the Elf and plan how Santa will find you (Tip 2).
Download your Christmas movies, playlists, and audiobooks while you still have good Wi-Fi (Tip 3).
Pack one small “cozy kit”: a throw blanket, a string of battery lights, or whatever makes a room feel like yours (Tip 4).
Decide on fewer, smaller gifts that fit in your luggage (Tip 6).
7 Tips for Celebrating Christmas While Traveling
Choose 2 to 3 Non-Negotiable Traditions
This is the most important thing we’ve learned. You cannot recreate your entire home Christmas somewhere else, and trying will make you miserable. Instead, sit down together before the trip and ask: “What are the two or three things that make it feel like Christmas for us?”
For our family, the answer hasn’t changed much from the Santa years to the teen years: a tree to trim, our favorite Christmas treats, and our favorite movies.
The tree has looked very different from year to year. When we still had a house in the US, we often had two full-sized trees and a tabletop tree in every bedroom. In Kuala Lumpur in 2024, we bought a small tree with lights and decorations. It wasn’t the biggest or prettiest tree we’ve ever had, but we enjoyed it, and when we left, we donated it to our Airbnb hosts for future guests. They were thrilled.
Our cute little Christmas tree at our Airbnb in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (left), and Ellie, Sophie, and Rachel posing with our festive tree (right). Trimming a tree together is one of our non-negotiables, even on the road.
In Melbourne in 2025, we arrived at our pet-sit to find a decorated tree already in the house, and we all felt at home right away. In our own apartment in Kuala Lumpur, we’ll trim our own tree again. It will be smaller than the ones we had when the girls were little, and that’s fine. We still trim it together.
Your list might look very different. Maybe it’s a Christmas Eve church service, stockings on Christmas morning, or driving around to look at Christmas lights. If you’re staying with the grandparents, ask ahead which of your traditions can fit into their house. Many grandparents are happy to make room for one and even happier to participate in the activities.
Lots of color marked the Christmas display at Sunway Velocity Mall (left), and the iconic Petronas Towers glowed red and green (right).
Pack the Magic: The Santa Years & What Came After
When our girls were little, Christmas magic was a big part of how we celebrated. We had an Elf on the Shelf who got into all kinds of shenanigans. The girls got phone calls and even emails from Santa. We tracked Santa’s progress on Christmas Eve. And every Christmas Eve, we sat down, and Kevin read ’Twas the Night Before Christmas.
As the story ended, sleigh bells would “magically” start ringing somewhere in the house, and the girls would run to bed so Santa wouldn’t catch them awake. In the early days, we used actual sleigh bells tied to fishing lines to ring bells outside the window. Later, it became a ringtone on a phone hidden somewhere else in the house and called by an older sibling.
Our girls believed in that magic longer than most of their friends. I’m convinced it’s because we always kept Christmas magical. The good news for traveling families is that almost every one of those traditions travels. The Elf fits in a carry-on. Santa can call you anywhere. The Santa tracker works in any time zone. And all ’Twas the Night Before Christmas needs is a book or a device to read from.
Here’s what surprised me: the magic didn’t end when the girls stopped believing. It changed shape. Our girls are much older now, and they STILL insist on ’Twas the Night Before Christmas every single Christmas Eve. Our copy of the book is in storage right now, so Kevin reads it from his phone. Nobody minds. Nobody would let us skip it, either.
So if you have teens, don’t assume they’ve outgrown the rituals. They may have outgrown Santa, but they haven’t outgrown the feeling. Ask them which traditions they want to keep. You might be surprised by how fast they answer.
All five of us in front of the Christmas decorations at a mall in downtown Kuala Lumpur, thanks to a kind stranger.
Still in the Santa years? Here’s what we’d do:
Bring the Elf. Elf on the Shelf packs flat and weighs almost nothing. Put him in your carry-on so he never gets lost with checked bags. You’ll be surprised how family and friends love getting in on the fun. During our Melbourne pet-sit, our girls loved putting our host family’s Elf in fun places and sending pictures to their kids to show them what she was up to.
Answer “How will Santa find us?” before they ask. A simple answer: Santa knows where every child is sleeping on Christmas Eve, not just where they live. They might be a bit nervous, but nothing beats the look on their faces when they wake up and see that Santa found them just as promised.
Track Santa from wherever you are. Both NORAD Tracks Santa and Google’s Santa Tracker work online from any country, so Christmas Eve feels the same in a hotel room as it does at home.
Pack one bedtime ritual. A book, a song, or a small stuffed Santa takes up almost no space and does more for the Christmas Eve feeling than anything else in your suitcase.
Bring Your Movies & Music With You
Our family’s must-watch list includes National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, Elf, and Klaus, and every year we try to add one new movie to the rotation. (In France in 2021, that was Arthur Christmas, and in Australia in 2025, that was Four Christmases.) Watching them together is when the season starts for us. One year we didn’t get to Christmas Vacation until a week after Thanksgiving, and afterward Rachel said, “I finally feel like it’s Christmas season now.”
If you’re traveling outside your home country, some of your favorite movies may not be available on your usual streaming services. A VPN like Surfshark can often connect you to your home country’s Netflix or other streaming platforms, though availability varies by service and country, so you may be able to bring your family’s Christmas movies with you.
We use Surfshark every day, at home in the U.S. and abroad. It’s our go-to for streaming, for banking, and for keeping our connection private on public Wi-Fi, which is the kind of Wi-Fi you end up relying on when you’re traveling for the holidays. Streaming is a nice perk, but the number one reason we use Surfshark is to protect our sensitive data. On public Wi-Fi, a VPN encrypts your connection, which helps keep your banking logins and personal information private.
Music matters just as much for us. We have Christmas music playing in the background of almost everything we do in December, whether we’re cooking, wrapping gifts, or getting ready for dinner. A shared family playlist on Spotify or YouTube Music makes it easy to take that with you anywhere.
For long flights and drives, we borrow books and audiobooks through the Libby app, and an Audible membership has been a family favorite for years.
Don’t wait until you arrive to figure out entertainment. Bad Wi-Fi when you’re ready to get into the festive season will kill the mood fast. Download your movies, playlists, books, and audiobooks before you leave home.
A decorated tree, a pile of gifts, and a Christmas screen saver on the TV made our Melbourne pet-sit feel like ours.
Make It Cozy Anywhere
This is one of our simplest traditions, and one of our favorites. No matter where we are, we try to make our space feel cozy in December. That means a throw blanket on the couch, a lit-up tree, and a snowy winter scene playing on the TV screen saver whenever we’re just hanging out.
We did this even in Melbourne, where Christmas falls in the middle of summer. It was warm outside, and we were curled up under a blanket in front of a snowy screen. It sounds silly, but it works.
It doesn’t take much. A blanket, a string of battery-powered fairy lights, a candle (where your accommodation allows it), or a Christmas screen saver can change how a hotel room, vacation rental, or guest bedroom feels. If you’re staying with family, bring one or two of these for the room you’re sleeping in. It gives the kids a little corner of “our Christmas” inside someone else’s house.
The tree we arrived to find already decorated at our Melbourne pet-sit, complete with the host family’s Elf on the Shelf and a black cat on its perch (left), and the tree glowing after dark (right).
Keep Your Kitchen Traditions
Food is where Christmas lives for many families, including ours. Our list includes buckeyes, our favorite Christmas cookies, and Kevin’s one-of-a-kind cinnamon rolls.
This is also where traveling gets tricky. Most of the apartments and Airbnbs we’ve stayed in across Asia don’t have ovens, which makes holiday baking close to impossible.
That’s why Christmas in Melbourne was so special for us. Our pet-sit came with a full kitchen, an oven, and all the tools we needed. Kevin made his cinnamon rolls TWICE! We made our favorite holiday treats, baked pumpkin chocolate chip muffins and strudel muffins, and had our favorite Tater Tot Casserole for breakfast on Christmas morning.
If baking is a non-negotiable, confirm there’s an oven and basic baking pans before you book. (Don’t assume.) If there isn’t one, pick one or two no-bake treats instead, or plan ahead with your host if you’re staying with family. Your hosts will gladly let you use their kitchen as long as you share the treats.
If you’re traveling abroad, make room for the local holiday foods too. European Christmas markets like the one in Strasbourg are full of regional treats, from gingerbread to mulled wine, and trying something new can become part of how your family remembers that Christmas.
Buckeyes (left) and crumb-topped muffins (right): the kind of Christmas baking we plan around when we choose a place to stay.
Choose Gifts That Fit in the Suitcase (& Experiences That Don’t)
Every year, we set aside at least a day to shop for each other, and then we wrap everything in pretty paper. We’ve kept that tradition on the road. (In Melbourne, we embraced the summer season with festive surfing Santa wrapping paper.)
What has changed is the size of the gifts. When you’re traveling, you can’t buy a pile of presents and carry them around for the rest of the trip, and that limit turned out to be a gift in itself. We focus on one or two meaningful things per person.
Surfing Santa wrapping paper kept our Melbourne Christmas summery (left), and Sophie shows off one of her small wrapped gifts (right).
Some years, the gift is the trip itself. In 2024, a few days before Christmas, we took a “vacation” to Tokyo. As full-time travelers, that’s what we call a splurge trip. Sophie was the catalyst. She wanted to see the Nightmare Before Christmas overlay at Tokyo Disneyland, and we all went along.
What none of us expected was how much Japan celebrates Christmas, even though it’s a secular holiday there rather than a religious one. Our hotel was decorated with a Christmas tree and a sleigh, and Christmas merriment was everywhere we looked at Tokyo Disneyland. (Our Tokyo Disneyland Christmas guide has the details.)
If you’re traveling to celebrate with family, experience gifts are also easier to carry than wrapped boxes. Tickets to a local light display, a special dinner out, or a day at a Christmas event can be something the whole family, grandparents included, does together.
Sophie posing in front of the Haunted Mansion Holiday Nightmare overlay at Tokyo Disneyland (left), and the impressive Christmas tree that welcomes visitors to the park during the holiday season (right).
Collect Ornaments That Tell Your Story
Our ornament collection is one of our most treasured traditions. We pick up ornaments from many of the places we travel, and we add ones that mark the milestones in our family’s life. Every year, trimming the tree becomes a walk through our story.
The hand-painted Santa ornament we bought at the Strasbourg Christmas Market hangs on our tree every year and takes us straight back to those streets in 2021. Our 2020 ornament was a personalized family ornament with all of us in masks. From “Baby’s First Christmas” to pets no longer with us, graduations, and more, our tree is a walk down memory lane every year.
If you want to start your own collection, choose small, sturdy ornaments. We learned that lesson the hard way when a glass ornament we bought for our neighbor broke before we got home.
A glowing carousel at Place Gutenberg, one of the family-friendly Christmas markets in Strasbourg (top), and a stand selling ornaments and nutcrackers in many sizes and styles (bottom).
What We’d Skip When Celebrating Christmas While Traveling
Trying to recreate your entire home Christmas. It’s exhausting, and it keeps you from enjoying where you are. Pick your non-negotiables and let the rest go.
Wrapping gifts before you fly. A friend of mine spent weeks wrapping presents for checked bags and figuring out how to sneak them across the country to her mom’s house for Christmas. The stress took over her whole season. Wrap when you arrive, or bring gift bags and tissue paper that pack flat.
Fragile souvenirs. Skip the glass. Choose ornaments and keepsakes that can survive a suitcase (and grumpy baggage handlers).
Streaming on Christmas Eve without a backup. Download your movies ahead of time. Hotel and rental Wi-Fi is at its worst when everyone is online at once.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you celebrate Christmas while traveling with kids?
Pick two or three traditions that matter most to your family and bring those with you. For us, that means trimming a tree (even a small one), our favorite treats, and our Christmas movies. Download entertainment before you leave, pack a few small things that make any room feel cozy, and add one local experience wherever you are. Celebrating Christmas while traveling works best when you stop trying to copy home and focus on the traditions your kids will remember.
How does Santa find us if we travel for Christmas?
Santa knows where every child is sleeping on Christmas Eve, not just where they live. You can reinforce it by tracking Santa together online on Christmas Eve (NORAD Tracks Santa and Google’s Santa Tracker both work from any country) and by keeping your usual bedtime ritual, whether that’s a book, a song, or setting out a plate of treats.
Can you bring Elf on the Shelf on a plane?
Yes. Elf on the Shelf is a small, soft figure that packs flat, so it fits in a carry-on or backpack. We recommend keeping him in your carry-on rather than checked luggage, so he can’t get lost along the way and can “appear” as soon as you arrive at Grandma’s house, your hotel, or your vacation rental.
How do you make a hotel room or Airbnb feel like Christmas?
Bring a few small things that pack easily: a throw blanket, battery-powered fairy lights, a Christmas playlist, and a snowy screen saver on the TV. Add a small tree or a few decorations if you’ll be there for more than a few days. If baking matters to your family, confirm there’s an oven before you book, since many rentals (in our experience, most of the ones we’ve stayed in across Asia) don’t have one.
Is it sad to spend Christmas away from home?
It can feel that way before you go, and that’s normal. I was convinced we would ruin Christmas the first time we were out of the country for most of the season. In our experience, it hasn’t been sad at all. Keeping a few traditions, adding new ones, and being together has made some of our favorite Christmases the ones we spent away from home.
Christmas Is Where You Are Together
Christmas isn’t about perfection. It’s about presence. The house never mattered for our family. The traditions came with us: ’Twas the Night Before Christmas, the cinnamon rolls, the movies, and trimming the tree together, wherever that tree happened to be.
Merry Christmas, and safe travels!
Are you celebrating Christmas while traveling? Which traditions are you bringing with you? Tell us in the comments. We’d love to hear how your family keeps the magic alive away from home.
About the Author
Colleen
Colleen is a Gen X mom, full-time traveler, and the voice behind Uncommon Family Adventures. She has spent part of every Christmas season on the road for decades, from family visits across the US to Kuala Lumpur and Melbourne, and has yet to find a place Christmas can't follow.
She specializes in multigenerational travel for families with teenagers and young adults, and writes honest travel advice based on real experience. Since 2024, she has been traveling the world full-time with her husband, Kevin, and their three daughters, Ellie, Rachel, and Sophie, visiting 15+ countries across 4 continents.
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