Christmas is always a special time. I can recall as a child the excitement I would have as I wondered about how good Santa really thought I had been during the year. I struggled many times to stay awake long enough to hear the click click of reindeer paws on the roof in the hopes of possibly seeing good ole St. Nick himself. As I’ve gotten older, Christmas managed to lose a bit of its luster. No longer was it shiny, new, and exciting. No longer was I filled with anticipation. Christmas was just like any old day of the week.

This Christmas held a different meaning for me and became a lot more magical than I ever thought possible. I once used to wonder if I could get back that same excitement from my childhood days. Would I lose sleep at night at the thought of all the wondrous things to happen? I had pretty much given up hope, but this Christmas, my first as a mommy, brought back all of the emotions of my childhood years and then some.

My son is officially 3 months old today. He’s much too young to really understand Christmas, so my husband and I agreed that this year we could get away without much in the way of gifts. Next year is a different story, but let’s take it one year at a time.

Christmas this year revolved around my son. We took pictures, something that we haven’t done since my brother’s last Christmas alive almost 5 years ago. This year we rejoiced in not only the birth of our savior Jesus Christ, but also the birth of our beautiful baby boy.

My parents spent the night with my husband and I on Christmas Eve, a complete change of tradition. And this year, my mother didn’t cry at another Christmas without her son. Instead she smiled with happiness at the new addition to our family. Christmas for us helped to fill a hole in our hearts, and I knew that my brother was smiling with us. I even felt his presence alongside my son.

There’s a part of me that’s looking forward to next Christmas, but another part of me wants to cling tightly to this Christmas, to stop time and continue to live in that moment alone. I don’t know if it’s possible to replicate the feelings from our first Christmas as a new family. And right now, those feelings are quite possibly the greatest ones I’ve had in my lifetime.