Christmas 1980-Something
Read more poetry by Britt Wolfe
Back then, it always felt brighter at Christmas.
Even in a house that creaked with cold,
even when the sun slid off the horizon too early
and the wind sang through the window frames
like a warning we pretended not to hear.
We had plastic holly taped to the bookshelf—
glossy, rigid, forever green—
each leaf sharp enough to cut a child
who touched beauty too eagerly.
But I loved it.
Of course I did.
Everything impossible to break
feels magical when you’re small.
The tree stood in the window,
five feet tall because that was all we had room for,
thin-limbed and tired from the seventies,
needles the colour of old dishwater,
but towering over me like a forest of promise.
Its branches carried the years in soft, uneven weight—
glitter-crusted popsicle sticks,
paper chains dulled with fingerprints,
ceramic bells painted by hands no longer small.
And at the top, the gold star
with paint chipped along one point,
a wound no one bothered to fix
because what mattered was that it still shone.
Broken things keep glowing if you let them.
Children understand this instinctively.
There was the year we painted the windows—
frosty snowmen and wobbly candy canes,
colours too bright against the December grey.
The neighbours smiled,
and for a moment the world felt soft,
like maybe we could hold joy to the glass
and it would stay.
We never painted them again.
Some traditions end before they become traditions at all.
Rainbow lights blinked through the living room,
casting shadows that danced like ghosts
who had learned to waltz.
Shortbreads were stacked in tins,
layered between wax paper,
and mailed across the country
to people who swore they missed us,
though distance makes memory generous.
Christmas cards crowded the mantel,
stockings hung too close to the fire—
a fire hazard we ignored
because beauty mattered more than caution then.
Names written in looping cursive,
stitched into red felt
by someone who tried so hard
to stitch the rest of us together too.
It was all so beautiful.
So dated.
So touched with the kind of magic
that only exists when you’re too young to understand
that magic is often a costume
pulled over something trembling.
Because beneath the tinsel
and the sugared shortbreads
and the paper snowflakes curling at the edges,
there was always a small crack in the floorboards,
a tremor in the quiet,
a truth no one dared name.
A shiny veneer over something crumbling.
Something that had crumbled long before I was old enough
to hear the sound.
Something hoped for
that never existed the way I believed it did.
Something I mourn now
in the rearview mirror of adulthood,
spackle over shatters
and bandages struggling
to keep the oldest wounds from opening again.
So I don’t say
Merry Christmas
to the past anymore—
not to that glittering thing I hold in my chest
with the chubby fingers of childhood
and the wide, wet eyes of hope
that never learned the shape of truth.
I say Merry Christmas
to what comes next.
To the future that builds slowly,
beam by careful beam,
with hands that choose tenderness
over pretending.
To the life I am crafting
so it does not crack the way theirs did.
To the beautiful things I build now
that shimmer every day
because you aren’t here
to dim them.
Merry Christmas,
to the home I make myself.
Merry Christmas,
to the child who survived.
Merry Christmas,
to the future—
to doing better,
to becoming better,
to building something
that will never need a shiny veneer
to look like love.
Keep My Words Alive
If this poem has stayed with you, you can help keep my words alive or explore more of my work. Every bit of support helps carry the stories forward.
WHERE WORDS MEET MORNING LIGHT
BEGIN EACH DAY WITH SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL
Every morning at 11:11AM, I send a poem — sometimes soft, sometimes devastating, always true.
💚 Subscribe now to read and breathe and feel along with me 💚
Poetry Anthologies by Britt Wolfe:
