My grandma made me a ceramic music box with Santa Claus on it when I was little. Every year, my mother put it out on the coffee table on December 1 — and not a day sooner. I so clearly remember the ragged cardboard box that we stored it in, and the way that the old shredded newspaper fell to the table as I lifted the music box out. It was the same every single year.

It would still be weeks before we put the tree up, of course. It was the 80s; Christmas wasn’t a two-month marathon in the 80s. But even without the tree, the music box meant Christmas to me. The music box was the start of the season.

I have the music box in my home now, and I still love to pull it out at Christmas time and show it to my own kids. I haven’t found a place to display it yet, but that doesn’t matter — as you can see, it’s broken.

Not too badly, mind you. Last year an elf lost his head, though it looks like my husband was able to glue it back on for me. A couple points on the star are broken off, and there is a chip at the front. The part that bothers me most is the tree; it broke off a couple of years ago, maybe more. The tree is the part that you turn to make the music start. My music box has been silent for a long, long time.

We never got around to fixing it last year, and we didn’t fix it this year either. I’ll just put it back in it’s box as it is and we’ll store it with the rest of our Christmas decorations until next December. I don’t mind. It’s just one of many things that we didn’t get around to doing.

Like our advent calendar: my daughter and I sewed a beautiful banner-style calendar like the one from this post, but once we put the calendar up, we did a total of … zero … activities from it. We scrambled to buy candles for our advent wreath at the last minute and we never lit a single one. My wooden spiral that I envisioned as a beautiful table centrepiece is still in the bag on my dresser. My Jesse Tree ornaments haven’t even been printed off yet.

We didn’t go ice skating (no ice). We didn’t go skiing (okay, that wasn’t ever on my list). Scaredy Squirrel Goes to the Beach beat out the Christmas-themed storybooks under the tree every. single. night. We didn’t embroider the ornaments that I fell in love with, and we didn’t go carolling around the neighbourhood (but that’s on the list right after skiing).

We didn’t see old-timey fireworks at Westfield Heritage Village, and we didn’t visit Dundurn Castle to see how the MacNabs celebrated Christmas in the mid-19th century, though I suspect that hasn’t changed since we went last year.

It doesn’t matter though. We still did some things. We put up a tree. We put out our shoes for Sinterklaas. We watched our favourite Christmas movies and we listened to my three favourite Christmas albums 673 times. We made presents. We saw Santa. We spent more time at church. We hosted Christmas dinner. We ate turkey for a week.

So who’s to say that we didn’t do enough? Why do we all have a crazy vision of what Christmas is supposed to be anyway? And who even came up with the idea of doing a different “Christmas” activity every day for 24 days? When I was growing up, we just ate the chocolate in our Advent Calendar and carried on with our day as usual.

Thank goodness Jesus wasn’t born in the 21st century. Poor Mary might have gone nuts trying to create the perfect royalty-themed nursery (okay, so some of these are actually really cute). I suppose though that the whole rustic homebirth-in-an-open-barn might have appealed to the crunchy homesteading crowd. I’m willing to bet that it’s already a hashtag on Instagram. Even by first century standards, though, I think it’s clear that the God of the Universe wasn’t looking for “perfect” in the events of Jesus’ birth. Or maybe He was, but His definition of perfect can’t be found on Pinterest. Maybe His definition of perfect is more about doing what we can with what we’ve got — with humility and gratitude.

Going forward this year, let’s be less. Let’s do less. Let’s focus less on the big over-the-top moments and embrace the small everyday ones. Let’s worry less when things don’t work out. Let’s aim a bit lower but appreciate a lot more.

Let’s take a dream vacation, as an example. Maybe this year, you just can’t make it happen. Maybe you’ve been dying to take your kids to Disney World but it’s not in the budget, or you can’t get the time off of work. It’s okay. Be disappointed — but not too disappointed. When your kids are grown up, they’ll have just as many fond memories of a weekly game night at your kitchen table as they would of riding Space Mountain or meeting Cinderella.

It might not feel like you’re creating memories when you’re in the moment. I get that. My game nights is often just a weekly exercise in frustration because my two-year-old keeps stealing game pieces and my five-year-old keeps throwing tantrums when she doesn’t win and my husband keeps wanting to play Risk, which is just the most boring game in the world. You too, right? It’s okay. Just keep showing up, because over time these weeks that turn into months and years will feel like perfection when we look back on them with a hefty dose of nostalgia.

And Christmas? Honestly, I don’t think my kids are going to remember any one Christmas in particular. They aren’t going to sit around as adults and say, “Hey, remember back in 2016 when Forest was two and he had a wicked fever on Christmas day and he screamed and screamed at mom’s feet while she rinsed off the turkey and she cried and cried because she hates touching raw poultry and then the kitchen flooded and covered them both with water and in the commotion mom put the turkey in the roaster upside down and then later when she tried to flip it over, the turkey flipped it’s wing out and she couldn’t get the lid back on so she flipped the bird at the bird that wouldn’t flip and then she punched it so hard in the wing that it we probably should have reported her for cruelty to half-cooked animals?” No, at most they’ll remember how much they enjoyed eating the turkey. Or rather, how much they would have enjoyed it, if they all hadn’t refused to try turkey.

What I know they’ll remember are the little things that we do year after year: the traditions, no matter how small they are. My kids will remember how their dad liked to hide Lego Santa in a fun new spot each morning. They’ll remember putting their shoes out for Sinterklaas on Dec 5 and their stockings up for Santa Claus on Dec 24.

They’ll remember how much their dad loved to bake for the entire month of December. They’ll remember how excited I got every year to put my big golden star in the window and my cheerful bells on my door. They’ll remember how nice it was when the smell of pine filled the house, courtesy of my essential oil diffuser.

And I hope that they will remember that the Christmas season didn’t officially start until I put out the ceramic music box that my grandmother made. It’s not perfect, but magic isn’t found in perfection.

Remember that.