Page 4 2025 Home For The Holidays Lincoln Daily News Continued -- It’s time to CELEBRATE! In 2012, Lincoln Daily News published its first Home for the Holidays online magazine. Since that time, we have brought you a wide variety of articles, written by our stringers and staff and all related to making the holiday season the best it can be. We continue that tradition this year with the 2025 edition of Home for the Holidays. When we started the magazine, we tried to make it about the joyous reunions we all experience during the holiday season, namely at Thanksgiving and Christmas. And it implied the gathering of family members together in one place for a fun event filled with food, family stories, games, music, and much more. This year we’re diving deeper into those reunions by looking more at what constitutes family. Some of us are blessed with large families and the gathering at the dinner table on Thanksgiving and/or Christmas includes multiple generations, children, parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, cousins, and sometimes if we’re lucky great-grandparents and greatgrandchildren. But it doesn’t always work out that way. Sometimes families are small, and the table is set for only a few. Sometimes, we’re isolated from family for reasons beyond our control, sickness and foul weather are the first to come to mind. But there are also those empty nesters whose children have moved to points unknown and they are unable to come home, and the parents are unable to go to them. Sometimes, it is an older generation that is living in a care facility, and the children find that at the holiday season, they no longer have a “home” to go to, and it is time for them to start making their own traditions. And there are those occasions where empty nesters have chosen to downsize from the larger family home, and all the sudden it is a question of “where are we going to put them all!” Some of us just don’t have family, and so a big “family” gathering takes on a new meaning. Perhaps that family is going to be close friends, church family, or co-workers in a similar situation. There are also those “first time” scenarios. The first time you and your new spouse, significant other or life partner must figure out how to divide the holiday season into two or more family gatherings. Also, how do you prepare your partner for what lies ahead? Do you try to clue them in or just leave them to find it all out for themselves (think Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon in Four Christmases)? Another first, the new baby. First of all, remember that the minute that baby is brought into the party, it is no longer about the
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