By Katie Schubert
The end of the year brings a unique set of challenges and pressures. From holiday shopping to family gatherings, sending out family cards and more, it’s enough stress for anyone, even in the most ideal circumstances. For the more than one million active-duty military members and their families, the holiday season can be even more complicated.
Among the many challenges military families in the United States face are frequent moves, being away from family and loved ones and deployments. While different military servicemembers deploy at different times to different places and for different lengths of time, at some point, most military servicemembers will have at least one holiday season away from their family.
Laura Longmire has been married to her husband, Justin, for nearly 23 years. He is currently stationed at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where she and their children also live. Laura Longmire figures that throughout their marriage, Justin has been away for about four years total. One of the things that has gotten her and her three boys through the frequent deployments over the years is building a strong community to rely upon.
“I would really emphasize the importance of building an in-person community,” she says, “and my mom taught me, something that has worked for me everywhere I’ve gone is, ‘Ask a favor.’ When you ask a favor, even if you’re the new one, you are building trust with the people around you, and [that] makes it easier for them to reach out to you and be a friend.”
Fellow military spouse Carolyn Croker, who spent more than 16 years in the Washington, D.C. area during and after her husband’s military career, agrees that a close circle of supportive people is very helpful. “Almost none of us are stationed where our families are, so those around us become families,” Croker says. “We rally together.”
Adjusting for the Kids
In 2016, Croker’s husband, Mike, deployed over the holiday season for what would be the last time of his decades-long career with the U.S. Air Force, and later the U.S. Navy. Just three weeks removed from her second spinal surgery in four months, Carolyn Croker found herself suddenly a single parent of four just before Thanksgiving. Because of her recent surgical procedures, she was unable to travel to see her and her husband’s families during that deployment. Her youngest child, Brady, was just 3 years old and had a hard time understanding why his father was gone.
“We put a jar in the kitchen and put an M&M for each day that he was gone, and so it helped him visualize when Daddy is coming home,” she says.
Even with Mike Croker in Guam on the other side of the world, his family found ways to keep him involved in their holiday festivities. “When he called during Thanksgiving, I put my phone on the buffet and he was kind of right there at the head of the table, and we prayed together and talked about what we are thankful for,” his wife says.
Another important factor during a holiday deployment for the family members back home is to have a full schedule. “Keep busy and keep a routine,” Carolyn Croker says.
An Army veteran herself, Reston, Virginia resident Charlene Wilde met her husband when they were at the same duty station. “I am a well-seasoned military spouse,” she says. “I think we went through six deployments together.”
The first holiday season her husband was deployed, Wilde went out of her way to make sure that everything was “peaceful and perfect” for her toddler sons.
“I asked them what sounded fun to them for the season, and they were like ‘Let’s have a party.’ So, we did it,” she remembers with a smile. “We invited a lot of our support group and went and bought all new decorations for our house and had this super fun party with all the other military families that had their spouse deployed. And we still remember that year. I have a lot of those decorations that I bought, and every year I think about it when I hang them up.”
Offering Help
Barb Carson is an Air Force veteran who is married to a fellow Air Force veteran, and, recently, her eldest son, Senior Airman Thomas Carson, who is a senior at Utah State University, deployed to the Middle East. Gone from October 2023 to April 2024, Thomas Carson missed the entire holiday season on his deployment. “My heart was definitely on my sleeve with my son being deployed,” his mother says.
One of the things Barb Carson most appreciated were the people who stepped up to help out her son while he was overseas. “People who knew me but didn’t know Thomas at all sent him packages around the holidays knowing it was going to be different for him, and those same people asked if we had plans, if we wanted to do anything, and that was fantastic,” she says.
Carolyn Croker also appreciated when the community, both military and civilian, stepped in to help her and her family when her husband was deployed. She advises anyone who has a friend with a deployed family member to just step up and help. “Don’t ask, just do,” she says. “Just be there and show up with that coffee. Plan a movie night. We need that companionship because it gets lonely.”
Barb Carson has similar advice for anyone looking to help this holiday season. “One of the things from when my husband was deployed that was super helpful was someone to watch the kids while I went Christmas shopping,” she says.
Laura Longmire agrees, saying, “Sometimes, you don’t even know what you need or don’t know what would be helpful. A lot of times, we’re not going to ask for help. When people do ask for help, be willing to step in right away and not put them off,” she says. “Offer something, and then follow through so it’s not another burden on the shoulders of the military spouse to try and come up with a way that you could be helpful.”
Staying in Touch
One thing that is so important during holiday deployments is to keep in contact. “I think it’s important to keep your spouse looped in when possible on things and use the technology that’s available,” Laura Longmire says.
If it isn’t possible to be in direct and regular contact, write notes or prepare little packages to open on specific days or certain moments, and give them to your spouse before they leave, she recommends. It’s not only important for the servicemember, but “it’s also really important for the kids to help them mentally start preparing,” she says.
Carolyn Croker encouraged her children to do the same. “We wrapped everything! Any little thing the kids wanted to send, we put in a box, so he could have tons of things to unwrap,” she says.
One of Charlene Wilde’s favorite Thanksgiving traditions is paying it forward. “Something that we do for Thanksgiving is we always look for servicemembers that are by themselves, and we invite them,” she says. “People did that for us, and we do that as well, and it’s something that my boys love.”
One additional thing Carolyn Croker always found helpful was thinking about the deployments as smaller pieces of time. “I would just sort of take it in chunks,” she says. One week at a time, one month at a time, she and all the other military spouses make it through the holidays with the help of the community, family and friends.
Freelance writer Katie Schubert is a military spouse who has spent more than one holiday season apart from her husband. She sends excellent care packages.
