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Chasing Christmas Past
There’s something about the holidays as an adult that feels hollow compared to the warmth and magic, they held in childhood. I’m not talking about nostalgia for toys or elaborate traditions. It’s the feeling; the sense of belonging, the excitement that used to hum in the air. As a child, Christmas wasn’t just a date on the calendar; it was a season, a feeling that wrapped around you like a blanket. As an adult, I find myself searching for that same warmth and coming up empty.
Every year, I try to rekindle that spark. I put up the tree, play the music, plug in the lights, and bake the cookies. For a fleeting moment, there’s a glint of excitement, like a faint ember catching fire. But it never lasts. The magic doesn’t come back. Instead, the holidays feel like another day with added expenses and expectations. I love seeing my son’s joy as he opens his gifts, but there’s a nagging guilt that my lack of excitement somehow diminishes the experience for him. I want him to have the warmth I felt as a child, but I worry I can’t give it to him when I no longer feel it myself.
Part of it, I think, is the absence of people who once made the season whole. Family members who were the pillars of every celebration are no longer here. Their absence is a shadow that lingers over every holiday. Traditions feel emptier without them. There’s an ache where their laughter used to be, a silence in the spaces they used to fill. And as much as I try to push past it, grief has a way of dulling the edges of joy.
The financial strain doesn’t help either. As a kid, I never thought about how much things cost or how hard it might have been for my parents to make the holidays happen. Now, I do. Every gift feels like a balancing act; spend enough to make it special, but not so much that I regret it later. The pressure to create a “perfect” holiday weighs heavy, even though I know perfection isn’t the point. You can have a beautiful Christmas with nothing but a single thoughtful gift. But no matter how modest or extravagant the season is, it doesn’t change the emptiness I feel.
I wonder if this is just what adulthood does to the holidays. Maybe the magic fades because we’re the ones trying to create it now. It’s no longer something that simply happens to us; it’s something we have to build for others. And in the process, it’s easy to lose sight of it for ourselves. The excitement I once felt has been replaced by responsibility, making sure the bills are paid, the gifts are wrapped, and the memories are made.
And yet, I can’t shake the hope that maybe one day, the feeling will come back. Maybe it’s not about recreating the magic of childhood but finding a new kind of warmth, one that fits this stage of life. Maybe it’s about focusing less on what’s missing and more on what’s still here; the people, the moments, the fleeting glimmers of joy.
The holidays may never feel the same as they did when I was a child, but maybe they don’t have to. Maybe it’s okay to grieve what’s been lost while still trying to embrace what remains. And maybe that’s what the season is really about; finding light, however small, in the darkest days of the year.
