Why We Stay Home for Winter Break and Host Everyone Else

The setup: why we stopped traveling for Christmas

The first year we lived in Park City — 2019, Charlie was three, Wyatt was a literal baby — we tried to fly to Hawaii for Christmas because that's what our Palo Alto friends were doing. It was a disaster. SLC was packed, our luggage was late, Charlie threw up on the descent into Kona, and we spent the first two days of the trip in a hotel laundry room. We came home and I said never again.

The next year we stayed home, hosted my parents, and it was perfect. The year after, we hosted my parents and two Palo Alto families. The year after that, we added Sean's brother. Now we are at peak occupancy: roughly 11 adults and 7 kids floating through the house at any given time, with the heart of it being a five-day overlap when everyone is here at once.

Why Park City is the perfect host city

Park City sells itself. People want to come. The minute we moved here, our social capital with our Bay Area friends went up about 400%. We are the friend with the ski house now. (We are also the friend with the actual house, where they used to live in 1,200 square feet in Menlo Park, but who's counting.)

• The kids ski at Park City Mountain Resort or Deer Valley with their parents and ours.
• Charlie's on PC Ski Team's holiday camp half-days, so she's out of the house from 9 to 12 each morning, supervised, exhausted, and happy. Wyatt does Woodward's terrain-park camp the same week. While the kids are gone, the parents drink coffee at Atticus on Main Street and pretend to do work.
• The town is dressed up. Lights everywhere. Snow on the ground. People walking around in fur and Bogner. It's a movie set in a way that makes our Bay Area visitors feel like they're in a Hallmark situation, which they secretly love.

The Christmas Eve menu (and why it's the same every year)

I am a creature of menu habit. Christmas Eve is the centerpiece, and I have not changed it in five years.

• Pa amb tomaquet (my mom's tomato bread) — this is what my mom made when I was little, this is what she makes when she's here, and now it's mine. Sourdough, garlic, tomato pulp, olive oil, sea salt. Done.
• One-pan paella — chicken, chorizo, shrimp, peas, the whole thing. I make it in a 17-inch carbon steel pan that takes up two burners. The kids think the socarrat at the bottom of the pan is the best part. They are correct.
• Endive salad with Manchego and pear
• Whatever my dad has decided to bring — usually a magnum of Cab and a magnum of his old Pinot. He carries them in a cooler bag onto the plane and the TSA agents always make him open it.
• Buche de Noel from Ritual Chocolate — yes, store-bought, no shame, life is short.

Christmas Day: pajamas, ski, dinner

Christmas morning is sacred. We wake up slowly. The kids tear through gifts. Sean makes pancakes. By 10am, the entire house is in ski gear and we go up to Deer Valley because Christmas Day on Deer Valley is genuinely magical — the snow is groomed, the crowds are family-only, and Empire Pass at lunchtime feels like Aspen circa 1978.

Then home for an early dinner. Whatever's still in the fridge from Christmas Eve, plus a roast, plus way too many cookies. Champagne all evening.

Boxing Day: the Solitude Yurt lunch

This is the trip my visitors always remember. December 26 we drive over to Solitude and do the snowshoe (or ski) tour to The Yurt at Solitude. It's a five-course lunch in an actual yurt in the woods. The chef comes out between courses to explain what just landed on your plate. The kids think it's the coolest thing they've ever done, and the adults are just quietly stunned that this exists 45 minutes from our front door.

I push it on every visitor. We've taken three different sets of Palo Alto friends. Every single one has rebooked it for a future trip on their own.

New Year's Eve: the 2017 Krug

By NYE we are down to just the parents and the kids and one or two stragglers. The big crowd has cycled out. This is, weirdly, my favorite night of the whole stretch. We do a quiet dinner at home — usually scallops, usually a really good Burgundy — and at 11:30 the adults move to the back deck with a bottle of 2017 Krug that I bought in 2021 and have been carrying mentally on a shelf in my head ever since. We drink it cold, no fanfare, watching the fireworks pop over Park City Mountain in the distance. The kids run around the living room hopped up on Martinelli's. It's the most quiet, most expensive, most wonderful 30 minutes of the year.

What I tell hosting first-timers

1. Buy more sheets than you think. Three sets per guest bed. You will be doing laundry constantly anyway, but having backups means you can flip a room in 90 minutes for a surprise cousin.
2. Atticus is your office. When the house is full, leave it.
3. The grocery run on December 23rd is the most important shopping day of the year. Whole Foods Park City is a war zone. Go early.
4. Plan one "big experience" per visitor stretch. Yurt at Solitude. Sleigh ride at Stein Eriksen. Snowmobile at Thousand Peaks. Pick one. They'll talk about it forever.
5. Hide one thing for yourself. Mine is the Krug. Yours can be a movie afternoon, a solo Deer Valley run, a hot-tub hour after the kids are down. You need it.