I don’t love Christmas the way I did when I was kid.

As a child, everything about the season was a holly, jolly marathon of music and lights. It stretched out for weeks and weeks in a candy-striped scavenger hunt of glee.

It started the Saturday after Thanksgiving when we hauled the tree out of the basement — wrapping it with softly yellowish lights and topping it with a serene plastic angel in a tinsel skirt. The Nativity set invited naughty kids to take Baby Jesus out of the manger and make him climb the ladder to the stable loft.

There was Santa and shopping at South Hills Village — the Emerald City of the Land of Oz that was a child’s Christmas in Southwestern Pennsylvania. At John F. Kennedy Catholic in Washington, we decorated the Immaculate Conception tree with ornaments homemade by each family. On Christmas Eve, we felt grown up singing at midnight Mass with the foreign language choir.

But it took forever to make that trek to Christmas. And my holiday was never set in stone. Some years, the emphasis was on Christmas Eve instead of morning presents because of my mother’s nursing schedule. Some years were a push to spend the holidays with my Midwestern family before rushing back for work a day or two later.

Sometimes the presents were big. The year I got a tiny TV for my room. The Christmas I got an Atari.

Others were smaller. One year there were beautiful handmade dolls for my sister and me, with intricately stitched dresses and carefully painted faces. I didn’t know at the time they were making up for the presents that couldn’t be bought if I was going to get to see my grandparents in Minnesota. That Christmas was precious — the last with Grandpa Bill.

As an adult, the marathon becomes a sprint. The days between Thanksgiving and Christmas tick by like the timer on a bomb, seeming to go faster and faster the closer to the final explosion of festivities.

The countdown comes with pressure to make every minute count. Make every memory perfect.

It’s the same kind of demand we put on so many areas these days. We shun compromise. We live in an all-or-nothing reality where good is too often not good enough.

But maybe Christmas has a lesson for us there. Can you remember being a kid when maybe you asked Santa for a pony but you got a Play-Doh firetruck and still fell into bed that night exhausted and giddy and sure it was the best day ever? We tell kids all the time that it’s the thought that counts, but we have to believe it too.

Christmas is about mangers and making do. It’s about the wonder-filled journey over the glittery destination. It’s appreciating each card as it shows up in the mailbox, each vintage carol as it plays on the radio and each cookie as it crosses your lips. It’s remembering to hug those relatives you see because next Christmas isn’t promised.

Kids revel in the whole, beautiful, imperfect perfection of the season. Adults need to remember how to do that — and carry it through the rest of the year.

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