Christmas Eve Reflections: On Wonder and Presence

There is something about Christmas Eve that still feels magical to me, no matter how old I get.

Perhaps it’s the particular quality of the day itself. The anticipation. The early darkness. The radio playing songs you’ve heard hundreds of times before. Something bubbling away in the kitchen. Fairy lights reflected in windows while outside the world disappears into December dusk.

Or perhaps it’s simply that Christmas Eve has always been my favourite day of the year.

Christmas Day is wonderful, of course, but Christmas Eve has always held something different for me. It sits in that lovely in-between place where almost everything is ready but nothing has quite begun. The waiting is still part of the magic.

And as I’ve grown older, I’ve realised that the waiting changes too.

The Christmas Eves We Grow Through

As a child, Christmas Eve seemed impossibly exciting.

I can still remember lying in bed absolutely convinced that I could hear reindeer on the roof. There was no questioning it. Somewhere outside, something extraordinary was happening, and if I could only stay awake for long enough I might catch a glimpse of it.

Then you grow up.

For a while, Christmas Eve becomes nights out and friends and coming home late. Later again, you become the person creating Christmas for somebody else. You’re filling stockings rather than hanging your own. You’re arranging presents, remembering batteries, preparing food and trying desperately not to make enough noise to wake small children.

And then, almost without noticing it happening, those small children become teenagers.

The stockings remain.

The Night Before Christmas remains.

The films remain.

The traditions remain.

But everybody around them has changed.

Perhaps that’s one of the strangest and loveliest things about family traditions. We repeat the same rituals year after year, and because the ritual stays still, it allows us to see just how much we have changed around it.

The Rhythm of Our Christmas Eve

Our Christmas Eve still begins slowly.

There are pyjamas, coffee and Christmas television in the background. The kitchen gradually becomes the heart of the house, with the Christmas ham cooking and preparations beginning for the following day. Vegetables are chopped, desserts finished, tables set and music drifts from the radio while everyone comes and goes.

By afternoon, the December light begins to disappear.

We light the fire and, at some point, It’s a Wonderful Life goes on. I’ve watched it so many times that I know what’s coming, and somehow that is part of its comfort.

My parents arrive later for dinner. We eat something warming and uncomplicated. There are candles on the table, Christmas pudding set alight, board games afterwards and sometimes neighbours appearing at the door for a glass of wine before heading back to their own celebrations.

Eventually the evening winds down.

We put on our Christmas pyjamas. We still read The Night Before Christmas, even though nobody in this house is little anymore. We still watch The Snowman and The Snowman and the Snowdog.

And yes, stockings still appear.

Some traditions simply refuse to be outgrown.

I’m very glad they do.

When the Magic Changes Shape

There can be a temptation, as children grow older, to think that some of the magic has gone.

There are no tiny people bouncing with excitement at bedtime anymore. Nobody genuinely believes they heard something on the roof. Nobody needs convincing that sleep will make Christmas morning arrive faster.

But I don’t think the magic disappears.

I think it changes shape.

It becomes your teenager still appearing downstairs in Christmas pyjamas.

It becomes everybody knowing exactly which film comes next.

It becomes somebody making the same joke they made last year.

It becomes grandparents sitting at your table.

It becomes the sound of people you love laughing in another room while you’re standing in the kitchen.

It becomes recognising, perhaps more clearly than you did when you were younger, just how extraordinary an ordinary Christmas Eve together actually is.

The wonder hasn’t gone.

We’ve simply learned to see it somewhere else.

The Strange Gift of Repetition

There is something about Christmas traditions that makes time visible.

We take the same decorations from their boxes. Cook the same foods. Watch the same films. Put the same things in roughly the same places.

And yet every Christmas is different because we are different.

Children are taller.

People are older.

Someone’s chair might be empty.

Someone new may be sitting at the table.

A tradition that once revolved around small children now includes teenagers or grown children. Parents become grandparents. Houses change. Families expand and contract and rearrange themselves.

Perhaps that’s why Christmas can carry nostalgia and joy at exactly the same time.

The repetition comforts us, but it also reminds us that life keeps moving.

There Is No Ordinary Christmas Eve

I think this is something I’ve become much more conscious of in midlife.

When you’re younger, family Christmases can feel endless. There will always be another one. Another year. Another Christmas Eve dinner. Another photograph in front of the tree.

But eventually you understand something that sounds rather melancholy until you realise it can actually make life richer:

none of these moments is guaranteed to repeat itself exactly as it is now.

That doesn’t mean we should spend Christmas Eve feeling sentimental about the passage of time. Quite the opposite.

It means we should be here for it.

Not trying to freeze it.

Not mourning it before it’s gone.

Just noticing it while it’s happening.

The Gift of Presence

Christmas Eve, for me, has increasingly become the moment when I want everything to stop.

Not because every job is finished. It probably isn’t.

Not because the house is perfect. It certainly isn’t.

But because eventually there has to be a point when preparing for Christmas ends and living Christmas begins.

At some stage, the lists have to be put away.

The phone can go down.

Whatever hasn’t been done can probably wait.

There are people here now.

That’s the bit we were preparing for.

And I don’t want to become so preoccupied with creating a beautiful Christmas that I miss the beautiful Christmas happening around me.

The Quiet at the End of the Night

Late on Christmas Eve, there is usually a moment when the house finally becomes quiet.

The kitchen has been tidied—or tidied enough. The lights are low. The fire is dying down. Everyone has disappeared upstairs.

And I tend to linger.

I look at the tree and the stockings and the familiar decorations we’ve taken out year after year. I think about the day we’ve just had and the people sleeping under this roof.

For a few minutes, there is nothing left to organise.

Nothing to prepare.

Nothing to improve.

Just gratitude.

Not the enormous, performative kind.

The quiet kind.

We’re here.

We had another one.

And perhaps that is what Christmas wonder looks like to me now.

Not reindeer on the roof.

Not something extraordinary arriving in the night.

But recognising the extraordinary thing that was already here.

From Our Little House to Yours

Wherever Christmas Eve finds you this year, I hope there is a moment somewhere in it when you stop.

Perhaps the house will be full and noisy. Perhaps it will be quiet. Perhaps this Christmas looks exactly as you hoped it would, or perhaps life has changed and you’re finding your way through a Christmas you hadn’t expected.

Whatever it looks like, I hope there is something good to notice.

A familiar song.

A candle burning.

Someone laughing.

A message from a friend.

A warm kitchen.

A hand to hold.

A quiet cup of tea when everybody else has gone to bed.

Some small reminder that wonder doesn’t always announce itself with bells and sparkle.

Sometimes it is simply the realisation that this moment, ordinary as it seems, is part of your life.

And that is worth being present for.

From our little house in the country to yours, Merry Christmas.

Ciara x

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