Growing up, holiday traditions never quite found a place to land in my home. They existed, I knew, just not with us—like music drifting in from another room. I noticed them. I just didn’t inherit them.

So when Brittany and I got married, I made a quiet decision: we would build something of our own. Not something flashy or perfect, but something durable. Traditions that could survive changing seasons, tight budgets, new responsibilities. Traditions we could return to year after year and say, this is ours.

That decision came with a complication: I’m not naturally a Christmas person. I love what Christmas stands for—family, joy, hope, gratitude—but growing up, the holiday itself often arrived with more tension than peace. December felt loud and heavy. More pressure than presence. Which raised a fair question: how do you create something beautiful and repeatable around a holiday you don’t instinctively embrace?

For us, the answer was simple and unexpected. We centered Christmas around something we both love: travel.

One of our most meaningful Christmas memories came in Whistler, British Columbia. The village looked like it had stepped straight out of a movie—lights glowing, snow blanketing everything in sight, the cold air giving you permission to slow down and stay close. Fires crackled. Time softened. Whistler felt right. And, for the first time I could remember, Christmas felt right too.

What makes that memory even more remarkable is what surrounded it. That year was hard. I had just lost my job. My confidence was thin. I was wrestling with deep questions about calling, purpose, and what God was asking me to give my life to. Money was tight. The future felt uncertain. Rent loomed larger than plans. And in the middle of all that, our dear friend Todd gave us a gift—space. A chance to breathe. A chance to step away and be held for a moment by beauty and quiet.

That trip didn’t fix everything. But it gave us something just as important: refuge. It gave us rest. And somehow, without us naming it at the time, it gave us a tradition.

That’s what we’ve discovered we need—then and now. Every year carries its own weight. The highs are real, but so are the lows. Parenting demands. Work stress. Relationships that require tending. Life has a way of accumulating. And by the time December arrives, making it to the end of the year can feel less like celebration and more like crossing a finish line.

This year, our little family will do it again. We’ll escape for a few days. We’ll eat Christmas dinner at some cheap restaurant. We’ll spend most of the day unpacking bags and settling into a temporary space. It won’t be glamorous. But it will be ours.

Because once a year, we choose the inconvenience. And in choosing it, we choose each other. We choose rest. We choose memory. And somehow, year after year, Christmas keeps finding its way home.