This morning I was awake and downstairs by 6:30 a.m., listening to Pentatonix Christmas and making lasagna.

It is a bit of a heavy burden I put on myself to make Christmas amazing, because I remember how amazing it was for me as a kid. My mom put up decorations every year. There were Christmas cookies and caroling, and hot chocolate in the church basement afterward that would melt the plastic spoons we used to stir the cocoa with.

Dad always took the kids to get a tree, and we would choose the biggest one we could get away with. When we got home and put it up, we would watch with glee as someone cut the net off of the tree and its branches bounced down to take up a quarter of our living room. We would all shrug and grin and tell Mom the tree hadn’t looked that big at the tree farm.

Now it’s my job to make Christmas magical at our house, which is something we do without Santa. There are special Christmas books that come out only in December, the Advent Calendar, the expectation my kids have that certain things will be in their stockings each year, and the anticipation of sticky buns and bacon on Christmas morning.

I love the Christmas season, hanging up Christmas lights, and making projects. It’s also the time of year when, with daylight in the Northeast at a pitiful low, I have almost no energy and can spend hours of each day sitting on the sofa.

The tension between what I want to do and what I get done is a struggle every year. I wonder if the magic I feel like I have to almost single-handedly generate would happen no matter what. Christmas isn’t about me, anyway. It’s about the Christ child and hope in the darkness. That’s why even though it is likely the hardest holiday for me,  it’s my favorite one.