Finding Forty

When Holiday Magic Looks Different Than You Imagined

December is here.

The month I’ve been waiting for since that positive pregnancy test back in 2023.

I’ve carried this vision for years: drive-through lights, Santa pictures, Cookie Day, decorating the tree with a tiny human old enough to actually feel Christmas.

Because my own childhood didn’t hand me holiday magic.

It handed me chaos.

And I’ve been slowly, stubbornly teaching myself how to build something softer, something my children can look back on with warmth instead of survival.

But this December isn’t quite what I imagined.

The Holiday Magic No One Warns You About

My two-year-old has been more overstimulated than excited, more overwhelmed than curious.

More big feelings than big smiles.

Not because anything is wrong, but because Christmas is loud, bright, and new, and tiny nervous systems can only take so much.

Tonight, after two hours of trying to settle for bed, he finally found the words behind all the fear.

He asked me, with genuine worry:

“Does Santa live inside our Christmas tree… and say HO HO HO?”

Suddenly everything clicked: the bedtime chaos, the tears, the frantic energy all week long.

He wasn’t “acting out.”

He was scared.

Creating New Traditions, Not Repeating Old Ones

So I told him the truth, or at least the truth that keeps him safe.

Santa doesn’t come inside our house.

Santa uses FedEx.

Presents stay on the porch.

Mommy and Daddy bring them in.

Simple.

Predictable.

Safe.

The kind of reassurance I wish someone had given me when I was small, when I was overwhelmed, silently panicked, and no one cared enough to help me regulate. Instead, they laughed at my fears and teased me for my anxious thoughts.

I watched the fear ease in his shoulders.

He needed boundaries around the magic, not magic running wild in the shadows.

The Part of Motherhood That Doesn’t Get Posted

It still took two hours of off-and-on screaming before he could finally settle.

Two hours of resetting, soothing, starting over.

My husband thought it was “tactics.”

He didn’t see fear. He saw behavior.

But I saw something familiar.

I saw that childhood panic I know too well.

I saw a tiny version of what I lived through, with no support, no soft landing, and certainly no one helping me regulate.

And that’s the part that breaks you a little, realizing you’re trying to build traditions you never had, while parenting a nervous system that mirrors the one you grew up fighting.

This is the exhaustion no one warns you about, the kind that gets into your bones when the night is long and every trigger is loud.

When the Magic Is Just Safety

I’m learning that holiday magic isn’t always the glittery, Instagram-worthy kind I imagined giving him.

Sometimes magic is:

✨ Sitting in the dark beside an overwhelmed toddler until he finally exhales

✨ Reassuring him that nothing scary will enter his home

✨ Choosing connection over perfection

✨ Building new traditions while healing old wounds

Sometimes the real magic is simply loving a child through a season that feels too big for them and breaking a cycle in the process.

The Christmas I’m Still Learning to Build

This December looks different.

It’s harder.

It’s messier.

It’s full of emotions, his and mine, that I didn’t fully expect.

But maybe this is what it looks like to rewrite a childhood in real time.

Maybe this is what it looks like to create holiday memories from scratch, one soft moment at a time.

We’re tired.

We’re learning.

We’re showing up.

And maybe the real magic of this season isn’t what we’ve always seen,

but what we’re brave enough to protect:

human dignity, starting as young as two years old. ❤️🎄