December 20, 2025
There is a very specific moment in December when the rules loosen a little.
It usually happens quietly. You are standing in the kitchen later than you meant to be. The lights are low. Something is half-wrapped on the counter. There is a cookie involved, maybe one you promised yourself you would not eat yet. The house is mostly asleep. And for a second, you feel it. Not joy exactly. More like permission.
Permission to not be so sharp-edged.
Permission to stop managing everything.
Permission to remember what it felt like when December was something that happened to you, not something you orchestrated.
That feeling does not last long. It never does. But it shows up often enough that you start to wonder what it is asking for.
Charles Dickens wrote, “It is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas.”
That line sounds sentimental until you sit with it. Then it starts to feel practical.
Thought of the Day: “It is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas.”
When Dickens talks about being children sometimes, he is not talking about immaturity. He is talking about relief.
Children live closer to the surface of things. They feel hunger when they are hungry. They get bored quickly. They laugh without checking the room first. They do not optimize joy. They stumble into it.
As adults, we learn to earn our moments. We schedule them. We justify them. We feel a little suspicious when happiness arrives without a receipt.
Christmas has a way of short-circuiting that instinct. It creates small windows where joy does not need credentials. Where you can sit on the floor and no one asks why. Where watching the same movie for the tenth time feels less like repetition and more like ritual.
Being childlike at Christmas is not about regression. It is about remembering a different posture toward time.
Kids are not nostalgic. They are present. They are terrible at planning and excellent at inhabiting the moment directly in front of them. December invites that posture back into the room. Not loudly. More like a chair pulled out when you are tired of standing.
The problem is not that adulthood makes us serious. It is that it convinces us seriousness is always required.
Christmas gently disagrees.
Question of the Day: If you were allowed to act like a kid all day tomorrow, what would you do first?
Not eventually. Not after the emails. Not once everything else was handled.
First.
Most of us already know the answer. We just do not trust it. It feels too small. Too indulgent. Too unserious.
Maybe it is sleeping later than usual without defending it. Maybe it is eating something ridiculous for breakfast. Maybe it is building something pointless. Maybe it is wandering without an agenda.
Notice how quickly your adult brain tries to clean the question up. It wants to add conditions. It wants to make the answer respectable.
But the question is not asking for your best version of childhood. It is asking for the truest one.
Christmas makes space for that question in a way most days do not. The calendar softens. The routines wobble. The door is already cracked.
You do not have to walk through it. You just have to notice what is on the other side.
If reflections like this are something you want to sit with more regularly, I share a Thought of the Day and a Question of the Day by email as well. It is quiet, daily, and meant to be read when there is a moment.
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