I strongly advocate for a no-rules holiday season—fuck it, celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah or Kwanzaa your way, tweak traditions, create new ones, and be happy.

Look, we had a great Christmas 2024 at home last week. Gifts were gifted, and Mark was happy. So what if we celebrated Christmas… ahem, only seven days into our respective Kinder and Lindt Advent calendars? Why wait until December 24, after all? All it takes is a raised eyebrow and a nod between Feng and me, which is married couple lingo for “Did you wrap it?” “Yeah” “Now?” “Sure, but let me have a coffee first.”

Mark doesn’t mind our early, surprise, floating Christmases. When he was younger, we used to tell him Santa would have a hard time finding us on the road. Now he knows that gifts aren’t very backpack-friendly, even though I always pack a small one I leave on his bed on December 24, wherever we are.

And so we celebrated Christmas and started packing. It was a cold, snowy week, and this year’s trip came with a first challenge—a 6 a.m. flight.

International travel from Canada is getting harder and harder, and more expensive too. There are just fewer options every year to leave the country. We used to fly direct with Air Canada but stopped three years ago because tickets are now more than twice what we used to pay before the pandemic. There is almost no competition, so airfares are not competitive, not to mention the many bullshit fees—a few days ago, Michael Rousseau, the chief executive of Air Canada, had to appear before a parliamentary committee to explain the airline’s new fees for carry-on bags (!) and seat selection.

Last year, we flew to Cancún, Mexico, with low-cost carrier Flair Airlines, and then we took a Cancún-Lima-São Paulo flight with the affordable Chilean. Sky Airline. We did the math, it was exhausting but a third of what we would have paid for a direct flight with Air Canada.

This year, we discovered Flair Airlines officially pulled out of Ottawa Airport, blaming insufficient demand and “high” airport improvement fees. And this is how we ended up booking Air Transat’s 6 a.m. flight to Cancún—there was no other option.

“Don’t worry, Juliette, this is probably a one-time thing… it will be cancelled the next time we need it,” Feng joked.

We were a bit worried about the logistics of a 6 a.m. flight. It meant going to the airport at 3 a.m., and it also meant pretty much zero sleep for Feng and me.

I don’t have much experience with super early flights. I took the 6 a.m. train to CDG Airport from Nantes many times, I took many long-distance buses between 5 a.m. and 8 a.m. but it’s different—you don’t have to show up hours ahead, and you can pass out in your seat almost right away.

One of my friends told me her hack was to go to the airport around midnight, have dinner and just hang out at the terminal. “That’s a great idea,” I said. “It works in Montreal but there’s nothing except Tim Hortons at the Ottawa Airport. I’m not even sure it’s open 24 hours!”

I was also worried about being cold because I can’t travel with winter gear—it’s useless and takes up too much room.

At one point I stopped worrying, finished packing and wrapped everything up.

Finally, on Friday night, we brought the backpacks downstairs. Mark went to bed, Feng announced he was going to lie down for a couple of hours and I chose to stay up.

Staying up when you have to is more difficult than it seems, even for a night owl like me. I learned it the hard way a few years ago when I stayed up for a Fortaleza-Natal bus ride. There’s a huge difference between turning off the light late because you’re busy reading in bed and starting a brand-new day with zero sleep.

We were zombies in the taxi to the airport, where we joined a huge crowd of other zombies. Apparently, Ottawa loves scheduling flights to Punta Cana, Cancún, Edmonton and Iqaluit at 6 a.m.

At least, everything was smooth, and we boarded on time. I forgot how horribly cramped Air Transat but I fell asleep right away anyway. Just as well, there’s no entertainment system.

I woke up when we landed in Cancún 4.5 hours later. It took a couple of hours to go through immigration and mostly get our checked bags in a baggage claim area packed with gringos from Ottawa, Toronto, Quebec, Kansas City, Philadelphia, Austin and more.

This is not our final destination. It’s a gateway, a “stepping stone” as Feng put it, the door to escape frozen hell, a long weekend before our next flight further south.

I’m not cold anymore.

For me, Cancun is spring… before summer.