Not the Christmas You Remember

Christmas at The Vineyard

December 14, 2025

There’s a moment, usually quiet, when you realize you’re no longer receiving the magic. You’re holding the responsibility instead.

As a child, I was the recipient of it.

My mother made Christmas feel enchanted: reindeer footprints on the ground, Santa calling our house the night before, tiny details that made belief feel possible long after most children outgrow it. There was no question of how the magic arrived. It simply did.

Then I became a mother.

I carried some of what I’d been given and substituted some with rituals of my own—crafts, small traditions, moments I hoped my son would remember not for their scale, but for how they made him feel. That season had clarity. I knew who the magic was for.

And then, almost without announcement, that season ended.

My son is grown now.
And I’ve realized there’s a part of adulthood we don’t talk about enough: the moment when the people you built something for outgrow it. When what you once gave no longer has a clear recipient.

That’s where many of us find ourselves during the holidays.
Some traditions, that we inherited and that we created ourselves, still fit. Others don’t. And suddenly the question isn’t how do I keep this going the same way?

It’s what do I do with everything I already know how to build?

This is where the idea of starting a Christmas at the Vineyard tradition this year became personal for me.

We spent two weeks transforming our Living Garden Room into Santa’s Gingerbread Workshop. Our wine bar became the focal point of Mrs. Claus’ Bake Shop. And for a weekend, a space usually beautifully styled for adult celebrations was filled with children, hot cocoa in hand, cookies being decorated and eaten at the same time, gingerbread houses half-standing, laughter echoing under the tent as they raced to Santa with their handwritten lists in hand written with crayons.

It surprised me how much we needed it.

Because what I’m learning is that the gift isn’t only in receiving the magic, or even in being the one who gives it. The real gift is learning how to repurpose it. Learning how to turn it on again, intentionally, differently, for wherever season you are in now.

Tradition doesn’t have to stay the same to stay alive. It can be edited. Reimagined. Offered to new people, in new ways, at new scales, with new meaning. Sometimes it’s for a community of thousands. Sometimes it’s for a table of friends. Sometimes it’s for a party of two. Sometimes it’s just for yourself.

That flexibility, that permission, is the real inheritance.

So tomorrow, my job is mailing nearly fifty letters written to Santa over the weekend to the North Pole. I take that responsibility seriously. Because a part of my new tradition is to continue the magic I once received - so yes the letters will be mailed to the North Pole and recorded so that parents can show their kids on Instagram as they see their letters being shipped off.

It matters that the magic keeps moving. That it doesn’t stop just because the season changed.

What I’m learning is this:
The most meaningful traditions don’t ask us to repeat the past.
They teach us how to reshape wonder for the life we’re actually living.
And maybe that’s what this season is asking of us all: not to recreate what we remember, but to decide what we’re willing to carry forward.

What new tradition are you carrying forward this year?

With love,
Erika