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.