Even though I believed in Santa Claus as a child, I never needed to feel loved through a fairytale. I felt love in the smiles and laughter around the tree. In the way Aunt Daisy would gift T-shirts with holiday slogans to everyone. In the way we’d spend hours building gingerbread houses, only for most of them to fall apart in the end. In the way we’d stay up as late as we could, just to drink hot chocolate and fight over which holiday movie to watch. The Grinch and Home Alone and Peter Pan (the 2003 film, which my mom is adamant is a Christmas movie in disguise). There was always a surplus of
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