Snow arrived early this year, slipping in quietly like it remembered where it belonged. The snow that doesn’t ask permission, just settles into the season and invites memory along with it. Holidays have a way of doing that. They don’t just mark time. They excavate it.
Growing up, Christmas wasn’t wrapped in shopping bags or algorithms. It smelled like cold air and sounded like runners scraping down pasture hills. We sledded wherever gravity allowed us to go. We dodged fence posts and laughed until our cheeks burned. We hoped the sled wouldn’t steer us directly into a frozen cow pie. No phones. No footage. No proof needed. If you were there, you knew.
Eventually the cold would win. Fingers stiff. Toes numb. We’d stagger back toward the house, boots clomping snow onto the floor, and Mom would already be waiting. Hot cocoa on the stove. Not from a packet. Real cocoa. Steam fogging the windows while feeling slowly returned to our hands. That warmth wasn’t just physical. It was reassurance. You’re safe now. You made it back.
The wood stove worked overtime in that old house, crackling through long winter evenings. Hay bales lined the exterior for insulation, a practical solution born of necessity and hand-me-down wisdom. The house itself was an 1880s relic. Warped floors that leaned under your weight. Door frames that never quite lined up. It creaked and shifted like it was alive, holding every story that passed through it. That house felt more like home than any modern place that came after.
Later, a newly modeled ranch house replaced it. Cleaner lines. Straighter walls. Less soul. By then, the land had already begun to change. Sand mining companies moved in slowly, deliberately, peeling away agriculture acre by acre. Fields that once fed families became extraction sites. Soil turned into commodity. Part of me still wants to demand that land back, to reclaim something sacred. The truth, quieter and harder, knows it was never ours to own. Only ours to borrow, tend, and love while we could.
After the land was sold, the old house met a practical end. Volunteer firefighters used it for training. A controlled burn. Watching that house go up in flames felt surreal. Not anger exactly. Not betrayal either. Just finality. Necessary. Efficient. The place that held our childhood reduced to smoke and ash without ceremony. A lesson in how easily something meaningful can disappear when it no longer serves an economic purpose.
As the holidays approach, these memories rise alongside the decorations and music and cheer. Warmth and loss braided together. When the cloudy murk of trauma creeps in, these are the memories that surface to steady me. Proof that warmth existed. Proof that safety was real, even if it wasn’t permanent.
The holidays aren’t just about what we gain. They’re about what we remember, and sometimes, what we grieve. They remind us that home isn’t four walls or deeds or ownership. Home is presence. Warmth. Returning. It’s the sound of a wood stove at work, a mug warming frozen hands, laughter echoing down a snowy hill. Even when the house is gone. Even when the land has changed.
As we move closer to Christmas, I’m holding space for all of it. The joy. The ache. The stories that still smolder quietly beneath the surface. Because remembering is its own warmth, and sometimes, that has to be enough.