Holiday Depression?

Any expats having difficulty with depression during the holidays? There's nothing about Christmas over here that's like home for me, and it's a time when I miss my family a lot. I'm doing well this year though. What works for me is to completely eliminate expectations about what Christmas ought to be like (friends, family gatherings, certain foods, Giving Trees, charity, church services, special music, Advent observations, Christmas crafts, baking and sharing Christmas cookies and treats) and instead focus on making new Christmas traditions that I can do here: making music at home, doing crafts at home, sharing charity with others here, creating new traditions, finding local church services even if they are very different from my home culture, cooking nice meals -- and making a new "extended family" by sharing all the above with friends who may be in the same situation as me. So, other expats, share your secret too! What's your remedy, your new tradition, the "something special" you do during this holiday time to make things better and more like "home" for yourself?

I understand what you're saying, but I look at it another way and celebrate the fact that I'm NOT 'at home'! In the UK the shops would be shut by the time I finish work each day so I would have had to organise presents, food, drink etc. long before Yuletide. Inclement weather (this year it's fog), train strikes and other obstacles would prevent me from doing anything I'd planned, like visiting family and friends, so it would be still be a case of having to ring each other anyway, like we do now. It would also be miserably freezing, not to mention dark when I set off and dark before I come home each day. There'd be rubbish repeats on the television so I'd probably decide to go to the pub. But I wouldn't be able to get a taxi when I want one, despite being prepared to pay the double charge over the festive period, and then I'd be fretting all evening about how I'd get home... Nah, I have to say that all in all I much prefer being in my new home.

Yes, I also think about all the bad things I'm "missing" and find I don't miss that at all! Although I enjoy being with family, there is too much travel expectation. Christmas eve with "my" family, Christmas day with "his" family, and then there are the poor people whose parents are divorced and they're running around trying to visit four different sets of parents. One of the nightmare years was the year we went to my grandmother's for her Chrismas eve celebration, but there was no way the kids Santa stuff would fit in our car, so hubby drove 4 hours round trip in an ice storm to get it, leaving at 9 PM on Christmas eve and getting in after 1 AM. This is just one of many things I don't miss! And I really don't miss the cold, dark, rainy weather! I was wondering if ppl were getting depressed here, but maybe it's just at "home" that people get depressed, where there are so much higher expectations anyway?