Last night I fell asleep while watching a British sitcom (I’d gotten less than 4 hours of sleep the night before and was sick with fatigue). When I woke up, snow was coming down, and the local PBS station was showing Ed Sullivan Christmas shows, like they did last year. Johnny Mathis was standing up in a thick white sweater singing “Sleigh Ride” (all the verses!). There was something about the combination of the snow outside, my candles that are a substitute for a fireplace, and the simplicity of the song and the presentation of it that evoked what the holidays felt like when I was a kid — the simplicity and the anticipation that comes closer to an ideal of Christmas than adults will let Christmas be.