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For most of the year, Christmas lived in the stacks of boxes, bins, and crates stored beneath the eaves of our staircase and stowed away in the walk-in closet of the spare bedroom. But come December, my parents set about transforming our home into something like a holiday dream.

Garlands of greenery twined around the banister and draped from the fireplace mantel. A seven-foot Fraser fir, fresh and fragrant as the woods themselves, arrived in the bed of my dad’s red pickup. We’d stand it by the den window, its branches outstretched, welcoming us back to the season. In the dining room, a smaller tree sparkled with soft white lights. My mother tied perfect red velvet bows to the grapevine wreaths on the front and back doors. And my dad, ever attentive to details, placed electric candles in each window, meticulously hiding the cords behind pine cones and ornaments, all to keep the magic alive.

Christmas in our house was a grand occasion, spilling its warmth and cheer into every corner. But time, inevitably, has reshaped those days. The boxes that once overflowed are smaller now; fewer bins, fewer crates. What once filled closets fits neatly on a few shelves in my mother’s townhouse.

Yet, still, she decorates, more sparingly now, but the gesture is no less meaningful. Along the mantel, she arranges pecan resin Santa figurines, each one a hand-painted gift from friends across decades. Aluminum angels, made by an artist she and my dad discovered so many years ago at the Craftsmen’s Christmas Classic in Greensboro, return to their rightful place in the china cabinet, as they always have.

My dad’s domain was always the tree. He’d string the lights, place ornaments just so, and then step back for my mother to add the finishing touch: a row of Christmas books beneath the tree. The Night Before Christmas and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, mine since 1970, leaned against my dad’s childhood favorite, The Life Story of Santa Claus, a 1940 first edition. Those books are worn now, bindings frayed, pages loose, but the stories inside remain as they always were.

The tree is now a slender artificial fir — easier for my mom to manage. Yet she fluffs its branches as if it were the same towering tree from my childhood, and she takes her time hanging the delicate glass ornaments she and my dad bought for their first Christmas together, 55 years ago, at a Kmart in High Point, carefully pulling each one from its original Shiny Brite box. The red and silver paint has faded, flaked away, but she’d never dream of replacing them. Fragile as they are, these little orbs hold the weight of every Christmas that came before, like tiny snow globes, encasing a lifetime of memories. I know, someday, these decorations will be mine. But I’m not ready for that. Not just yet.

When the decorating is done, my mother settles back, taking in the scene she’s created. She smiles, seeing the lights twinkle in their familiar places, remembering my father’s steady hands, hearing the echoes of old laughter.

The rooms may be smaller, the decorations fewer, but there’s a quiet joy here, a contentment that permeates the space. It isn’t quite the same, but it’s enough. It is still Christmas, and our hearts are full, filled with so much love for all that remains.

Elizabeth Hudson
Editor in Chief