Well, here we are—Christmas Day 2025. If you’ve been following along with this year’s Blogmas series, you know I’ve been posting holiday-themed content every day leading up to today, which means this is my final Blogmas post until next year. So first things first: Merry Christmas to all of you reading this, whether you’re surrounded by family chaos, enjoying peaceful solitude, or somewhere in between. This year, I decided to shake things up by asking AI to generate writing prompts for each day of Blogmas, and today’s prompt feels particularly fitting for a finale: “Personal: Christmas Day reflections—how do you celebrate now, and how has it changed over time?”

It’s a question that makes me pause, sitting here in my Roanoke home with Krypto nearby, the house quiet except for whatever Christmas movie I might have playing in the background. The honest answer is that my Christmas Day in 2025 looks almost nothing like the Christmas mornings I knew as a kid, and yet somehow, I’m okay with that. Most of the time, anyway.

The Christmas Mornings That Were

If you’ve read through my various Blogmas posts over the years, you know that nostalgia hits me hard during the holidays. When I close my eyes, I can still see those childhood Christmas mornings with perfect clarity—or at least, I think I can. Memory has a way of polishing the edges of things, doesn’t it? Making them shine brighter than they probably did in real life.

April and I would wake up at some ungodly hour, the kind of early that only excited children and extremely dedicated Black Friday shoppers can achieve. We’d stumble down the hall to our parents’ room, shaking them awake with the kind of persistent energy that I’m sure they found both endearing and exhausting. Looking back now, I realize they probably got maybe two or three hours of sleep, having stayed up late playing Santa, arranging everything just so.

And that arrangement—that was part of the magic. In our house, there was a very specific protocol: presents from Mom and Dad came wrapped in festive paper with our names carefully written on tags. But Santa’s gifts? Those were different. They were never wrapped. Instead, they were arranged with an almost artistic precision, each item placed just so, creating these little scenes of wonder that we’d discover. It wasn’t just about the presents themselves; it was about the presentation, the theater of it all. Santa didn’t just drop off gifts; he created moments.

Then came breakfast, and this is where my dad truly shined. Dad was an amazing cook, but breakfast was his masterpiece medium. Christmas morning meant pulling out all the stops—French toast that was somehow crispy and custardy at the same time, sausage gravy that could make you forget every other meal you’d ever eaten, eggs scrambled to perfection, bacon that hit that perfect point between crispy and chewy. The kitchen would fill with these incredible smells, and we’d all gather around the table, still in our pajamas, still riding the high of present-opening, and just… be together.

Christmas Eve belonged to Mamaw and Papa’s house in Daleville—that was for the extended family gathering, the chaos of cousins, the traditional meals and controlled mayhem. But Christmas Day? That was just the four of us. Our little nuclear family unit, safe and warm in our own traditions.

The Transitions

Life has a way of drawing lines through our personal histories, these before-and-after moments that fundamentally change how we experience the world. For my Christmas celebrations, there have been several of these lines, each one redefining what the holiday means and how it feels.

The first major shift came with my parents’ divorce. Suddenly, Christmas wasn’t one day but a complicated negotiation of schedules and logistics. The simple joy of waking up and knowing exactly how the day would unfold was replaced with questions: Which parent this year? When do we do the handoff? How do we make sure everyone feels included? The magic didn’t disappear, but it became more deliberate, more conscious. We were all working harder to create and maintain it.

Then came the deeper losses. When Dad passed away, it wasn’t just losing him—it was losing those spectacular Christmas breakfasts, losing one of the architects of my childhood Christmas magic. Later, when Mamaw passed, we lost the matriarch who had anchored those Christmas Eve gatherings for as long as I could remember. Each loss didn’t just take a person; it took the traditions they carried, the roles they played in our holiday choreography.

These weren’t just changes; they were fundamental rewrites of what Christmas could and would be. You can’t go backward. You can’t recreate what was, no matter how much you might want to. The best you can do is find a way forward that honors what was while accepting what is.

Christmas in the Present Tense

So here’s what Christmas Day looks like for me now, in 2025: I wake up whenever my body decides it’s ready—no excited sister, no presents calling my name from under a tree. Krypto might need to go outside, and we’ll stand there in the morning cold, him doing his business while I look at the quiet street, maybe seeing a few neighbors loading cars for their own family gatherings.

I’ll come back inside and maybe I’ll make myself something special for breakfast, though it won’t be Dad’s French toast. I’ve never quite mastered his technique, and honestly, trying to recreate it feels wrong somehow, like I’d be chasing a ghost instead of making my own tradition.

The day stretches out before me, unscheduled and undemanding. I might treat myself to a special meal I’ve planned and prepared—nothing elaborate, but something that feels like a celebration for one. I might watch Christmas movies I’ve seen a dozen times before, the comfort of familiar stories washing over me. I might read, or write, or just sit and think.

I don’t do presents anymore, not really. It’s never been my love language anyway—I’m much more about words of affirmation or acts of kindness. The whole gift exchange thing has always made me vaguely uncomfortable, that pressure to perform enthusiasm, to match energy for energy, to navigate the complex social dynamics of giving and receiving. Being alone on Christmas means being free from that particular anxiety.

And here’s the thing that might surprise you, that might go against everything society tells us about spending Christmas alone: I’m not lonely. Alone, yes. But not lonely. There’s a difference, a crucial one that I think gets lost in all our cultural messaging about the holidays. Society seems to think that being single and without immediate family on Christmas is something to be pitied, something that needs fixing. But sitting here with Krypto, my memories, and my own company—I’m okay. More than okay, actually.

The Weight of What Remains

When I think about what’s truly changed and what’s stayed the same, I realize that my faith-based understanding of Christmas hasn’t shifted much at all. The spiritual weight of the holiday, the celebration of hope entering the world in the most unlikely way—that remains constant. It’s like a bassline running under all the other melodies of the season, steady and unchanging even as the arrangements above it shift and evolve.

What matters most to me now is different than what mattered when I was seven, or seventeen, or even twenty-seven. Back then, Christmas was about the excitement, the anticipation, the presents, the special food, the break from routine. Now? Now it’s about connection, even if that connection happens through phone calls, texts, or video chats with family and friends scattered across the distance. It’s about taking a moment to be grateful for what was, what is, and what might still be. It’s about recognizing that love doesn’t require physical proximity, that family extends beyond blood, that traditions can be honored even when they can’t be replicated.

I think about those childhood Christmases, and yes, they blend together now into this warm, golden feeling more than specific memories. The details might be fuzzy—was it the year I got the Nintendo or the year Santa brought April and I $100 in cash that Dad made some especially amazing French toast?—but the feeling remains crystal clear. Love. Safety. Belonging. Magic.

And maybe that’s what I’m still chasing, in my own quiet way. Not the specific traditions or the exact recreations of past Christmases, but that feeling. Maybe I find it in different places now—in a perfectly timed text from an old friend, in Krypto’s contented sigh as he curls up beside me, in the satisfaction of making it through another year, another Blogmas series, another cycle of seasons.

The Unachieved Balance

I’ll be honest: I haven’t quite figured out how to balance the nostalgia for what was with creating meaning in what is. Some years I lean too heavily on memories, spending Christmas Day excavating the past instead of living in the present. Other years I try too hard to ignore the past, to pretend that this new, quieter version of Christmas is all I need or want. The balance remains elusive, and maybe that’s okay. Maybe the searching for balance is itself a kind of tradition, a way of honoring both what we’ve lost and what we still have.

Change is forced on us circumstantially—that’s just the nature of life. People leave us through death or distance or simple divergence of paths. The traditions we thought were permanent prove to be more fragile than we realized. The family structures we assumed would always exist reshape themselves into new configurations we never anticipated. We don’t always intentionally let traditions go; sometimes they just slip away when we’re not looking, or when the people who anchored them are no longer there to hold them in place.

But here’s what I’m learning, slowly and sometimes reluctantly: the fact that Christmas is different doesn’t make it less than. It just makes it different. The quiet Christmas I’m having today, with my dog and my memories, isn’t a consolation prize for the Christmases I used to have. It’s simply what Christmas looks like in this chapter of my life.

Looking Forward, Looking Back

As I wrap up this final Blogmas post for 2025, I find myself thinking about next year’s Christmas, and the one after that. Will they look like today? Will something change between now and then that redraws the lines once again? There’s no way to know, and maybe that’s part of the beauty and terror of being human—we can’t see the changes coming, the losses or the gains, the new traditions that might spontaneously emerge or the old ones that might unexpectedly return.

What I do know is this: Christmas will come again, as it always does. And I’ll meet it where I am, with what I have, surrounded by whoever is there to share it with me, even if that’s just Krypto and the ghosts of Christmases past. The magic might look different now—quieter, more introspective, less dependent on presents and production—but it’s still there if I’m willing to see it.

Maybe that’s the real gift of getting older, of watching your Christmases evolve and change: you learn that the magic was never really in the specifics. It wasn’t actually about Dad’s French toast or the way Santa arranged the presents or even having everyone gathered in one place. The magic was in the love behind those things, and love—well, love is remarkably adaptable. It finds new ways to express itself, new traditions to inhabit, new moments to make sacred.

So here’s to Christmas 2025, whatever it looks like for you. Here’s to the traditions you’re maintaining and the ones you’re creating. Here’s to the people you’re with and the ones you’re missing. Here’s to the balance we’re all trying to find between honoring the past and embracing the present. And here’s to the recognition that sometimes, being alone on Christmas isn’t the tragedy society makes it out to be—sometimes it’s just another way of being human, of being real, of being okay.

Merry Christmas, everyone. Thanks for joining me on this Blogmas journey.

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What about you? How have your Christmas celebrations changed over the years? Are there traditions you’ve kept, ones you’ve lost, or new ones you’ve created? I’d love to hear your own reflections in the comments below. After all, sharing our stories is one way we keep the magic alive, even when everything else changes.