"Home"--more than just a word

"Home," today's 5 x 7 watercolor card

'Tis the time of year that "home" grows in feeling beyond its ancient history as just a word.
Listening to holiday music, decorating a tree, enjoying the present of family brings back memories and emotions deep within.
Mere definitions do not come close to the meanings, which is perhaps why it is such an old word with so many variations and levels of meaning.
First spoken at least 4,500 years ago in the Caspian steps as a Proto-Indo-European root word *tkei, it meant something like "to settle, dwell, be home." 
From there as humans spread out and became isolated by geography, its descendants are found in hundreds of languages  as diverse as Kurdish and Sanskrit, Bengali and Nepali, besides most of the western world.
It forms all or part of words such as amphictyonic, hamlet, hangar, haunt, site, situation and much more.
More than you want to know. "Words have meanings," I used to preach to students. They and we often have no idea how deep the meanings are. 
But wanting to be "home" for the holidays, or any other time, is deep within us.