But when the holiday season approaches, distant families gather to celebrate and spend time with each other.

“I love Christmas very much and my family and I enjoy Advent, which is the season preparing for Christmas,” Kyla Avery, office administrator at Living Hope Church, said. “So it’s kind of a build-up, you know, all through the months of November and December.”

Avery has a family of two daughters and her husband. She also has five siblings — one that lives in Alpena, one in Lansing, and three in Alabama.

She said every two years, the siblings from Alabama will come up for Christmas and celebrate with traditions.

Courtesy Photo Eldrick Lal’s children, Ranson Lal and Hazel Lal, stand in a holiday picture from 2011.

“It’s awesome,” Avery said. “I mean, we’re all fairly close in age. And we all are married, and all of us have kids. So it’s really awesome just to come together and see our kids enjoy Christmas, the way we enjoyed Christmas as children.

“In some ways, we revert to being like children,” she continued. “For example, one of our family traditions is to have a wrapping paper tube fight and after we’ve done all of our Christmas festivities, we bring out the wrapping paper tubes — young and old all together — and we have basically like a sword fight. It’s hilarious and we’re all laughing.”

Also in Alpena is a college full of students, some of whom aren’t from the area.

Daddy Hill, a student at Alpena Community College, spends his holidays with family in Detroit when he’s not living at College Park Apartments for the semester.

He said his family is full of athletes — Hill plays basketball at ACC, his mother coaches basketball, his brother coaches middle school basketball, and his sister is a professional athlete overseas in Budapest.

Hill’s sister is coming back home for the holidays and he has not seen her since the summer.

“I’m really excited to see her — I’m excited to see my family as a whole,” Hill said. “Like I said, my mom coaches so usually when I have a game, she has a game too. So they don’t really get to come to many games. So when I get to see them, the time is really good.”

Hill said that traditions for his family include playing basketball, watching Christmas movies, decorating the Christmas tree, and having a festive dinner.

He said that when he’s away from home, he tries to spend the holidays with his teammates at ACC.

While Hill’s family is based in Detroit, other families might be based on the other side of the U.S. — like Pastor Eldrick Lal of Living Hope Church.

“I lived in Seattle for 10 years, because my parents live in Seattle,” Lal said. “And my younger brother lives in Seattle, so we always came together on Christmas day. Because we all come from the Middle East, our elderly generation tells the younger generation about the struggles that they had in the Middle East financially and economically.”

Lal was born in Pakistan, but his family moved to Libya, where he and his family lived for 28 years until moving to Seattle.

Lal’s wife, Rosebell, has family that was already set in America. He said he tries to spend it with his immediate family of his wife and two children, but that he celebrated Christmas last year in Virginia so Rosebell Lal’s side of the family could travel and celebrate together.

“It went well and a lot of my wife’s family members brought dogs,” Lal said, laughing. “We had four dogs running, including our black labrador and labradors are full of energy. So it was like chaos in a good way.”

When it’s just Lal’s immediate family, he, his wife, son, and daughter will make lots of different food and play games for Christmas. He said that he’ll share stories of growing up in Libya and everyone will have their red pajamas on.

Near and far, many people are looking forward to spending the holidays with family and friends.