By: Preston Young
Christmas has always been my favorite holiday. Even now, as life looks very different than it did years ago, that hasn’t changed. Growing up, Christmas had a built-in rhythm because my parents were split. Every other year looked completely different. On my mom’s years, we usually packed up and headed to Ohio to be with her side of the family. Those Christmases felt full and loud in their own way, big family gatherings, long drives, and the feeling that the holiday lasted more than just one day.
On my dad’s years, Christmas morning was spent at home with family nearby. One constant during those mornings was my grandmother. Every Christmas morning, without fail, she came over with a Christmas bag for each of us. These weren’t store-bought gift bags. They were handmade, and throughout the year, she would sew onto each bag things that were meaningful to that grandchild (she had over 10 grandchildren, and each of them had their own personalized bag). I still remember what was on mine: a baseball, a basketball, dogs, and much more, and she wrote “pretzel”. My grandmother had a nickname for each of us, and Pretzel was mine. Those bags weren’t just containers for gifts; they were stories. They were proof that someone had been paying attention all year long.
As a kid, Christmas felt simple. You woke up early. You waited. You ran downstairs. The day revolved around presents, food, family, and absolutely nothing else. Time moved slowly then, or at least it felt that way.
Christmas now looks very different.
This year, my grandparents from Ohio are visiting us in Connecticut and will be coming over on Christmas morning. That alone feels full-circle in a way that’s hard to describe. At the same time, Christmas has become a careful balancing act. We’re coordinating time between both sets of parents, grandparents, Rachel’s family, and extended family. There are calendars involved now. There are conversations about timing, travel, and logistics.
It’s still fun. It’s still our favorite holiday. But it’s different.
We’re in a season of life that feels like a transition, one that doesn’t always have a clear label. We’re not kids anymore. We have a house. We have a dog (who, for the record, opens his own Christmas gifts and takes that responsibility very seriously). We host. We plan. We clean up afterward.
At the same time, we don’t have kids yet, so we don’t get to experience Christmas through that lens: the magic, the early mornings, the wide-eyed excitement that once defined the holiday for us. Instead, we’re somewhere in between. Old traditions still matter deeply, but new ones are quietly forming.
There’s something about this stage of life that can feel like a lull, not because it’s empty, but because it’s changing. It’s easy to rush through it. To think of it as a waiting room for whatever comes next.
But Christmas has a way of reminding me that these years deserve to be fully lived, not sped through.
The meaning of the holiday hasn’t gone away; it’s just shifted. It shows up in different places now: in hosting family under your own roof, in realizing how rare it is to have grandparents able to gather together, in appreciating the effort it takes to bring everyone together even for a short time.
I still love every second of Christmas, but I experience it differently now – less through anticipation and more through gratitude.
Maybe that’s what growing up really looks like.
Not losing the magic, but learning where it lives now.
As life keeps moving faster, I’m trying to slow it down during this season. To appreciate these transition years for what they are, not something to get through, but something to remember. Because one day, I know I’ll look back on these Christmases the same way I look back on those mornings with my grandmother and her handmade bags: as moments that mattered more than I realized at the time.
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