Some thoughts after another Christmas season:

• In many ways our two boys were the ideal ages for it. The six year old has done it enough times to know what’s coming and anticipate the different elements, and the two year old is like a joyful, bright-eyed little elf who’s down for anything.
• Introducing them to the season’s traditions and iconography was a trip. The lore is so deep that it’s like catching up a new viewer of a plot-heavy TV series at season six—at some point you’re like “just go with it” and luckily they have no problem with that.
• One evening we went to a local park with a big walkable light display, which had a Santa and Nativity Scene and trains and a spinning penguin and a bunch of other seasonal regulars. That combination of completely different characters and mythologies is fascinating and honestly awesome. It’s a melting-pot holiday season and I’m here for it.
• We saw a community production of A Christmas Carol that used the original Dickens language, which meant it was trickier for the boys to follow (though having seen The Muppet Christmas Carol already definitely helped) but also a richer experience—especially thanks to the haunting audiovisual effects during the Ghost Marley sequence.
• As a teenager I was all “Christmastime is so phony and corporate” and now I’m like “haul out the holly, baby!” Yet once the 26th arrives, I can’t wait to get the tree and decorations back in storage to reclaim space in our small house. (Christmas music is still allowed until New Year’s Eve, capped off with “Auld Lang Syne” of course.)
• I didn’t have much time to watch many Christmas movies that I’d normally get to, including It’s A Wonderful Life on Christmas Eve, but one I did rewatch that’ll continue to be part of the rotation for years to come is The Holdovers.