I did not want to go. On Christmas Eve there is only one place to be:  home. We lived in Boston at the time. My father announced he was going to walk to the liquor store and would any of us like to go? I threw on my boots and went.

 Five minutes down the road I regretted my decision but somehow managed to keep quiet about it. Snowflakes tumbled off the streetlights and headlights crawled along the streets like cats stalking their prey. Through a drugstore window, men stood at perfume counters and sales ladies smiled.  

 Inside the corner liquor store the wooden floors creaked and moaned beneath our feet as my father tucked his purchases under one arm. Outside, the snow stung our faces and I held my father's back like a shield. We stopped at the corner waiting to cross the street as the snow swirled about us. “It’s like we are inside of a snow globe,” I said. He instantly smiled as if shaken from his adult world and looking into a white kaleidoscope.

 Christmas isn’t about the tangible, the end goal. It is about the process; the shared anticipation with someone you love. It is a season where age doesn’t matter. Adults and children get to abandon all logic and play on the same playground where unexplainable magic exists.