The Small Things We Remember
Dec 12, 2025When I think back on the holidays from my childhood, it’s never the big plans that come to mind first.
It’s the in-between moments — the ones that slipped into the season without anyone trying to make them special.
🚗 It’s waiting in a long, slow line of cars to see Christmas lights, the windows fogging up while everyone tried not to complain.
🍪 It’s Grandma’s cookies lined up neatly on a tray, even though we all quietly avoided them.
🎄 It’s stringing popcorn for the tree and and feeling the popcorn break as you slide it down the thread.
♥️ It’s stockings embroidered with our names… sometimes spelled right, sometimes not.
🎁 It’s spending a whole day baking ten different kinds of cookies, only to give most of them away.
🎅🏽 It’s grandpa’s Santa baseball hat that stayed on his head from Thanksgiving to New Year’s.
🎶 It’s the family member who insisted on nonstop Christmas music — and everyone else who'd had enough on day three.
😐 It’s driving hours to see relatives we didn’t recognize, pretending to love gifts because that’s what kids do.
🦌It’s waking up to find the oats we left for Santa’s reindeer scattered everywhere, as if they came barreling in at full speed.
None of it was glamorous.
None of it matched the kind of holiday “magic” we often feel pressured to create now.
But those are the moments that stayed.
And that’s what I come back to, again and again:
We don’t get to choose which moments become memories — the small, imperfect ones do that all on their own.
Kids don’t need flawless traditions or picture-perfect plans.
They need presence.
They need warmth.
They need the simple, everyday things that stitch a season together — the things that seem ordinary now but become the stories we tell later.
This year, instead of chasing the versions of the holidays that look good from the outside, I hope you give yourself permission to notice the ones that feel good from the inside.
Notice the small joys.
Notice the simple connections.
Notice the things that will mean something someday — even if they look messy in the moment.
Because those are the memories that last.
And they grow quietly, beautifully, in the background of real life.
— The Ms. Paige Way.
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