The Older I Get at Christmas

The older I get, the quieter Christmas becomes.
Not because it means less—but because it means so much more.

When I was younger, Christmas was all noise and motion. The house buzzed with excitement: wrapping paper rustling, carols blaring, kids running from room to room, leaving trails of glitter and laughter behind them. I used to stay up past midnight, wrapping gifts under the dim light of the kitchen, arranging cookies on a plate for Santa, tiptoeing down the hallway just to see tiny faces light up at dawn.

Back then, I thought that was what made Christmas magical—creating the perfect moment, the perfect day. I worked so hard to make it special for everyone else that I often forgot to stop and feel it myself.

Now the house is quieter.
The toys are gone, the stockings fewer. My children are grown, with homes and children of their own. And this year, I’m the one waiting—listening for car doors outside, for the laughter that always comes before the knock.

When they finally arrive, the house comes alive again. Coats pile up by the door, someone puts on an old carol, and the smell of cinnamon and roasted apples fills the air. My granddaughter runs into my arms, her tiny hands warm and sticky from candy canes.

“Grandma,” she says, “is Santa coming tonight?”

I smile. “He might, if we bake him something special.”

Together, we roll dough and dust it with sugar. Her giggles echo down the same hallway her father once ran through in his pajamas. For a moment, time folds in on itself. I see my younger self—tired, messy, happy—watching her own little boy laugh the same way.

Later that evening, after the meal and the stories, after the children have fallen asleep under the soft glow of the tree, I sit in my old armchair with a cup of cocoa between my hands. The lights twinkle softly, reflecting off the ornaments I’ve collected over a lifetime. Each one tells a story: the clay star my son made in second grade, the angel my husband bought on our first Christmas together, the little wooden train my father carved long ago.

Some chairs are empty now.
Some voices have turned into memories I hear only in my heart.

But even in the silence, I feel them here—in the scent of the cookies we still bake, in the recipe written in my mother’s fading handwriting, in the warmth that fills this room when everyone’s home again.

I used to think Christmas was about creating magic.
Now I see—it’s about noticing it.

It’s in the way my granddaughter’s hand fits in mine.
In the snow falling quietly outside.
In the soft murmur of gratitude that fills the space between words.

The older I get, the fewer gifts I need beneath the tree.
I just want laughter in the kitchen, stories shared over cocoa, and the grace of another year to whisper, “Thank you, Lord, for letting me be here to see it.”

So here’s to soft lights, old carols, wrinkled hands holding mugs, and the kind of joy that doesn’t sparkle loud—it glows quietly, steady, holy, and real.

And as the tree lights flicker one last time before I turn them off for the night, I realize something simple and profound:
I don’t need to make Christmas magical anymore.
It already is.