Christmas is a time to be with family. But for those of the 160,000 soldiers, airmen, sailors and Marines in Iraq who celebrate the holiday, Dec. 25 will be just another day.

The New York Times asked several service members to give us their thoughts on being away from home at Christmas:

DOING ONE'S DUTY

In Iraq, there are signs everywhere not only of holiday ingenuity, but also of people back home helping bring Christmas to us. At night, there's a bunker here on the base that has what appears to be a small, colorfully lighted Christmas tree perched on its uppermost point, but daylight reveals a triangle-shaped pile of green sandbags. The walls over at the computer office are plastered with orange and blue penguins and snowmen — drawings only kindergartners could produce, with their shaky "thank yous" penciled into the margins.

A few weeks ago, I set up a fiberoptic Christmas tree and inflatable Snoopy Snow Globe here in the office. People like our retired Marine tanker-turned-contractor gave me a hard time about the decorations.

Lately, however, the teasing has stopped, and it makes me laugh when the big tough Marines and contractors hug the snow globe and pester me to turn off the overhead lights and switch on the Christmas ones at the first hint of darkness.

But more often than I should, I wish I didn't have time to hang candy canes or drape tinsel from the ceiling of our office. I wish I could be out scanning the road for homemade bombs with the military police or shepherding convoys from base to base with my fellow supply Marines.

I wish I could have been involved in the history-making election that just took place, instead of watching it on the news like the rest of the world. I know my job here is important, but I can't help but wish I could be doing more.

So on Christmas Day, I will eat Christmas dinner in the safety of our fancy chow hall, while other Marines eat packaged "meals ready to eat" during a break between foot patrols in some insurgent-infested city. I will open presents from home, while other Marines check piles of garbage for booby traps. I will watch "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" on DVD, while other Marines guard checkpoints. And I will wish I was out there with them.

Maria Saucedo | Corporal, Marine Corps

NO TIME OFF IN WAR

Call me a mama's boy. My mother did everything for me. She never missed a ball game or a parent-teacher conference. She never forgot a birthday; and as much as she hated the day, she remembers the anniversary of my enlistment. My entire life she has made sacrifices for me — and never more so than at Christmas.

She made those sacrifices not because she had to but because she wanted to. I know now that the only reason she worked as hard as she did — putting up the lights, decorating the tree, buying gifts with money she really didn't have — was so that my sister and I would both give her big smiles on Christmas morning.

This is my first Christmas away from home. I guess it will just be another day in Baghdad. There is no time off in a combat zone. This is not a problem for me so much; I knew this day would come when I enlisted. I do know, however, that it will be hard on my mother.

But I hope she'll take some comfort in knowing that on Christmas Day, I'll be in the barracks, looking at the tiny plastic evergreen she sent me and opening all the presents she mailed over here.

Timothy Miller | Specialist, Army

SANTA SHOWING UP

It's Christmastime in Iraq. How do I know? I just bumped into a Toys for Tots box in the rotunda of the United States Embassy Annex in Baghdad.

I've been seeing Toys for Tots boxes on military installations for 17 years, ever since I joined the Army. No matter how small or far-flung or dismal, if it's a military post and it's Christmastime, there will be a Toys for Tots box, and by Christmas Eve, it will be overflowing. The sight of one here, though, in what used to be Saddam Hussein's presidential palace, made me do a double-take.

It was the same hastily constructed, unfinished, freshly sawn plywood box festooned with printed pages of generic Christmas art that I'm used to, as familiar and homey as a Salvation Army bell-ringer. But in these surroundings, sitting on a marble-inlay floor, backed up against a mirrored wall under the famous green dome of the palace, it looked almost surreal.

This will be a hard Christmas for my family and me — our first Christmas apart since I married and became a father. Knowing that just as on every other day here, I will be roused by the beeping of my watch alarm on Christmas instead of the prods and whispers of my daughters, eager to go downstairs and open presents, will hurt.

But when I tip the bag of stuffed animals and plastic race cars, mailed to me by family, friends and the second-grade class that adopted me at the start of my tour, into that Toys for Tots box, I will feel just like Santa Claus.

Richard Spainhour | Major, Army

CHRISTMAS MEMORY

Being away from home for the holidays is nothing new for me. I've been deployed more times than I can remember. Let's see, I've celebrated Easter in Port-au-Prince, Christmas in Sarajevo, New Year's in Kosovo and Thanksgiving in Baghdad. Each time, I've been reminded that while I miss home, it's not awful being away and, in fact, it can be fun to create new memories.

The other day, I was on a mission in a Black Hawk helicopter. We were flying low over a village in northeastern Iraq, and we saw a group of children who were waving to us. So we tossed a soccer ball we had in the chopper. As it fell to the ground, the children rushed it and started to play with it. For a fleeting second I relived the meaning of this holiday season and created another Christmas memory.

Patrick J. McDonald | Sergeant, first class, Army