It’s Christmas time, and my kids are 2 and 4. Magical, as everyone keeps telling me. This is the year. They must be so excited. And they are, I assure you. But boy, the pressure is really on ME now to live up to the hype. Traditions must be kept, or started. Decorating the house, buying the tree, the advent calendars, the gingerbread houses, the Christmas books. As each special thing happens, I wonder, hmmm, does this mean I have to do this again next year? Paper chains until they are how old? And, crap, I forgot to string the Christmas cards – is it too late?At two and 4, they are getting to be old enough to remember and expect. When they are babies, you can kind of just wing it, Christmas. The letter to Santa is not a requirement. The cookies and milk beside the fireplace? Optional. But this year I have to be on my game, because any slip of logic, any lack of wonder, could diminish the magic. It has to be perfect. But no, it doesn’t. My neighbor popped by last night, needing two carrots for her family’s half-cooked dinner. Our kids scampered off together while we caught up at the doorway, talking about the Christmas dinner plans and whether googly eyes on paper chains were upsetting tradition. We both ruled out the Christmas tree hunt this year – that urban trend, where you drive to the exurbs and tramp through frosty air at a tree farm, picking a tree as a family. Chopping it down, sharing hot chocolates and sleigh rides. Lovely. But no. Not this year. Not enough money, not enough time.

“We’ll do that once or twice. The kids can say, ‘Remember the year we…?’ That’s good enough,” she declared. I agreed. Annual traditions are fine for the little things. Maybe occasional traditions will have to suffice for others.

The big tradition in our family is going to Grandma and Grandpa’s for Christmas. We drive up a few days ahead – six hours in good weather – and spend the entire holiday at my mom and dad’s house. Christmas dinner at mom’s table, cookies left beside their fireplace, Christmas presents under their tree. We skate on the lake, we do gingerbread with the cousins, we live rurally and together, like the Berenstain Bears. We miss the Christmas Eve service at our own city church, but it seems a fair price to pay for family. Especially this year, when so many of us are thinking of the Newtown families, whose own holidays are steeped in grief.

And of course traveling to see Grandma and Grandpa this fifth year in a row is what gets me most. That’s where the future is cloudy. What traditions will last as Grandma and Grandpa age and downsize? Will it come to pass that one year we stay home in the city, because Grandma and Grandpa have downsized to a condo, or are too ill to take us in? Each year I get frazzled as I try to pack the car for Christmas – skates, stockings, snow gear, presents, advent calendars, pillows and lovies, all the odds and ends that come with a young family and travel. But imagine not doing it. Imagine NOT having a place to go on Christmas to be with family.

Every additional year we get to do it is magical. I’m so excited. It’s Christmas time, and it’s going to be perfect.