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What’s the Strangest place you’ve ever visited for the holidays?

In my family the norm over Christmas holiday visitation rights seemed cut and dried. It was so regular that I didn't really question it. Thanksgiving may be up for grabs, but for Christmas Eve we went to visit my mother's side of the family, and for Christmas day, my father's side. The location of the Saye family Christmas was different each year, but Christmas Eve was always at my Grandmother's house. Naive and young, brought up with these traditions, I thought that this was the way everybody did it. I wasn't yet aware of other cultures and traditions. As far as I was concerned this was the way it was. Until one year.

My father's first cousin owned a beach front motel in Daytona Beach. It has long since been leveled and the spot where it was is now occupied with another, much larger hotel. The Seashore Motel was a nice place. Nothing huge, just about ten stories arranged in two towers that slanted back ever-so-slightly from each other with elevators in the middle. There was a pool, and every room had paintings of flying fish above the beds. A week's stay was given to my mother and father as a wedding present. My father's cousin A.W. lived in the penthouse apartment with his wife Ann. I used to play with their grand children.

One year, they invited the entire Saye family down to Daytona for the holidays, and it totally re-wrote my thoughts on what to expect from them. I'll never forget watching my Uncle Bob try and get into the ocean for a swim in the middle of December. The temperatures were in the sixties, but the ocean was a whole lot colder. We took a smaller table-top Christmas tree and the number and size of presents was much less than usual, but none of that mattered. I was at the beach in December for the Holidays. Who did that? To me the novelty and the memories of that trip were worth more than anything else that happened.

I have come to understand just how much of an effort it must have been to keep that ritual the same for so long. It seems like year-to-year the entire family plan seems to change. These days, anything goes. Where could I be next Christmas? Next year we'll have a three and a half year old, ready to jump into the middle of the wrapping paper, and a nine month old that's just starting to pull up on stuff. Life changes so often and in so many ways each year, that there's no telling how or where I'll celebrate the holidays.

Ever go to the beach for the holidays? True, not the most exotic local ever, but it was that first break from the norm for me growing up. Do you go to the mountains, or the mid-west? Where have you gone for the Holidays that might seem like an unlikely spot?