“Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat,
Please to put a penny in the old man’s hat…”
That little rhyme has lived somewhere in the back of my mind since childhood, popping up every year right about the time I realize—again—that Christmas is coming whether I’m ready or not. One minute it’s early December and I’m telling myself I have plenty of time, and the next thing I know, the calendar is shouting at me, the stores are packed, and I’m standing in my kitchen wondering how I let it sneak up on me again.
Every single year.
Christmas comes fast—too fast. It barrels in like a runaway shopping cart in a Walmart parking lot, and I’m left scrambling to catch up. The tree goes up later than I planned, the cards don’t get mailed when I swore they would, and the cookies somehow feel more like an obligation than a joy. I always think I’ll be more prepared this year. I never am.
And then—just like that—it’s over.
The gifts are opened, the wrapping paper is piled high, the house smells like leftover ham and sugar cookies, and there’s a strange quiet that settles in. The decorations stay up, but the magic feels like it packed its bags and left sometime around Christmas afternoon. That’s when the letdown hits. Hard.
I start wishing for a do-over.
I wish I had slowed down. I wish I had soaked it in more. I wish I had paid better attention to the moments that mattered instead of the list that never ended. Christmas, that big wonderful event we build up in our minds, feels like it slips through our fingers almost as soon as we get hold of it.
That shouldn’t be how it feels.
Somewhere along the way, we’ve turned Christmas into something exhausting instead of life-giving. We rush through Advent like it’s a checklist instead of a season of waiting and wonder. We chase the “perfect” holiday while missing the holy one unfolding right in front of us.
Down here in the South, we like to say we’re going to “set a spell,” but come December, nobody’s setting anything except an alarm clock. We run ourselves ragged trying to make memories, when half the time the best memories come from sitting on the couch in fuzzy socks, laughing at something silly, or retelling the same old stories we’ve heard a hundred times. Those are the moments that stick. Not the fancy ones. The real ones.
Christmas was never meant to leave us feeling empty when it ends. It was meant to fill us—with joy, with hope, with love that carries us straight into the New Year. The birth of Christ isn’t a one-day event; it’s a reminder that light came into the darkness and stayed. If we’re feeling let down when Christmas is over, maybe it’s because we expected too much from the day and not enough from the meaning.
The goose may be getting fat, and the pennies may be hard to come by these days, but the heart of Christmas hasn’t changed. It’s still about generosity, still about grace, still about slowing down enough to notice that God showed up in the simplest way possible.
This year, I’m trying something different. I’m trying to let Christmas be quieter. Smaller. Less polished and more present. I may still be unprepared when it arrives—I probably will—but I’m hoping I won’t be so quick to rush past it when it’s here.
Because Christmas doesn’t need a do-over. It just needs our attention.
And maybe—just maybe—if we set a spell and let it linger, it won’t feel like such a letdown when the calendar turns and the New Year comes knocking.
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