It’s a holiday dilemma for every military kid who ever spent Christmas at a new duty station: How will Santa find us? 

Years ago when my family moved from Germany to Fort Knox, Ky., two weeks before Christmas, I was dismayed to find our quarters had no fireplace for Santa to tumble down.

“He’ll use the front door,” my mother said.

The thought must not have had great appeal to a 5-year-old. I was convinced he’d make his grand entrance through the oven.

That’s just one of my many fond holiday memories in the military. With the holidays upon us, military families will celebrate the season in different time zones and hemispheres. There’s something comforting in keeping the same traditions year after year and something uniquely military about integrating new ones picked up along the way.
Each year Amy Fulmer and her family, who are stationed at Fort Lewis, Wash., add an ornament with their names, the year and duty station, to the tree. Shannon McManners, an Army Brat and Army wife, exchanges German Christmas ornaments with her mother and sister each year. “We fell in love with the designs over there and have continued to grow our collection since returning,” Shannon said.

My longtime friend Carrie Countiss, an Air Force brat, remembers with fondness the English “cracker” party favors with the prizes inside that her mother put on the table for her and her brother during the holiday meal. Meanwhile, across the English Channel, my sister and I put our boots outside the front door for St. Nick to fill with fruit and cookies — and an occasional lump of coal.    

Food and nostalgia go hand in hand. Carrie’s family still enjoys eating leak soup—an English favorite — each Thanksgiving. My family started using the chocolate-filled Advent calendars during our Germany tour. I still look for them in the commissary.  When we moved to Fort Knox, my father’s boss, Col. Dave Hampton, gave my mother a mess hall recipe for S.O.S. (creamed beef on toast). The colonel had his mess sergeant break down a recipe that served 200 to serve four to six people.
 
“Our S.O.S. recipe was born!” my mother told me recently. Thirty years later, we still enjoy S.O.S. every Thanksgiving and Christmas morning. 

This Christmas, Molly Wagner and her newly retired Army family will break with tradition and head to Aruba with their stockings. “Yipee!” said Molly. “Just the thought of not wrestling with the tree or preparing a holiday feast for days has us over the moon! We’ll be singing ‘O Tannen-PALM’ and the sands of the beach will provide our “White Christmas.”
But will Santa find them?

She thinks so and she hopes he approves of their break with tradition. “We’ll know for certain when we explore the contents of our stockings on Christmas morning — goodies or lumps of coal.”

And if it’s coal?

“We’ll use it to start a bonfire,” Molly said.