Someday I will write a book about Christmas. I may start it today, in fact, since I’ve been threatening to for the last dozen years. But like most things I say I’m going to do around Christmas time, it either doesn’t get done or I half-ass it. April is really my month for stretch goals.

For me, the Christmas season always feels like being a beginning swimmer at a swim meet. Everyone else is diving and turning and passing me, and I’m just trying to stay out of their way and not drown. Since having kids, things have improved because it’s so much easier to make miracles for small innocent offspring than it is to make them for one’s self. But let’s just say before that, my goal was to minimize the number of hours between Dec 1 and Dec 26 spent sobbing in the bathroom.

This year Carl mostly made Official Christmas happen, helped by my mother-in-law, and I slept and tried to grow bone. He did a great job. It was one of the best.

And I don’t think my kids noticed that one of the Christmas engines was not firing off. I think this is of course because Carl is amazing, but also because as a family we have edited Christmas to the point that it is manageable. We don’t come close to doing it all. But we try to do enough to carry the through-line — peace, goodwill, and caring — forward.

So it’s in that spirit that I thought I would share this video around the importance of editing in the creation of my generation’s central epic.