Here's hoping all your festive plans are going well. It's a special time, whatever your beliefs (unless they're that it's not a special time), and one when thoughts turn to family and home (mostly). 

Indeed, by the time it came for Darwin's fifth Christmas away from home on the Beagle voyage, he was understandably showing signs of homesickness,

Christmas-Day.—In a few more days the fourth year of our absence from England will be completed. Our first Christmas-day was spent at Plymouth; the second at St. Martin’s Cove, near Cape Horn; the third at Port Desire, in Patagonia; the fourth at anchor in a wild harbour in the peninsula of Tres Montes; this fifth here; and the next, I trust in Providence, will be in England. We attended divine service in the chapel of Pahia; part of the service being read in English, and part in the native language.

Who can blame him? 

The Voyage of the Beagle (1839). Free kindle version here

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Voyage-Beagle-Charles-Darwin-ebook/dp/B004TOYF40/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1386941469&sr=1-1&keywords=The+Voyage+of+the+Beagle%3A