To my kids, Christmas smells like cinnamon bread, warm spiced almonds and cashews, and kettle corn. Also, sausages with peppers and onions cooking on giant flat top grills. That’s because we used to go to Dollywood every year at Christmas time. If you’ve never been – either to Dollywood, or specifically to Dollywood’s Christmas – I will just tell you that it is fantastic. Oh sure, it’s every bit of overabundance and overstimulation that theme parks generally are, but in December it’s perfect. It’s decorated in glorious, colorful excess. It gets dark early, so you see millions of lights on every building, tree, or stationary surface. And it gets cold. Overheated kids at a theme park can be a whiny disaster, but kids having to bundle up and keep moving to stay warm are downright jolly.

Then there was Christmas in the Smokies. We would stand in line every year to get into that show. It always felt wonderful to bustle into the warm theater with the crowd of people – yes, an absolute CROWD of people! And it was wonderful! Can you imagine?! We would spend the first five minutes just unwrapping scarves and taking off mittens and hats and making sure that everything was stashed appropriately so that nothing ended up on the theater floor only to be missed later when someone’s little fingers were turning blue. The warmth and coziness of the theater was delicious, and one or more of the kids would usually end up falling asleep during the show.

That was okay. They could wake up to the same Christmas songs that they heard every single year. Same songs, same basic storyline, a little change up in costuming or choreography from year to year just to freshen it up. We loved it. A couple of times, they did try having different holiday productions in the big theater. We were not fans. We were there to see Christmas in the Smokies – the same one we saw last year and the year before that. We weren’t looking for novelty, we were looking for tradition.

And Granmommy and Papaw were a huge part of the tradition. It was that stage of childhood where getting to drive Granmommy in the little track car of the Rockin’ Roadway ride was a coveted position. Or you wanted to get the horse nearest to where Granmommy sat on the carousel bench so that you could be sure she saw you.

Papaw never road the rides. He liked to find a good people-watching spot and settle in. He was our base of operations – you take them to the swings, Granmommy will take him to the kiddie rides, I’ll get the cinnamon bread, and we’ll all meet back at Papaw, okay? Papaw watched the stroller, watched the child who didn’t have to go to the bathroom, kept up with the bags of kettle corn that we hadn’t finished yet and the water and Coke bottles that we were still working on, and held the pile of coats that were shed early on but would be desperately needed in just an hour or so.

I’m remembering all of this because we were putting up the Christmas tree over the weekend and we have several ornaments from those years. There’s the picture where we’re all standing with a reindeer. There’s one with Santa. There are several in a large sled. My baby girl knows that I love to see these, so she announced each one with excitement as she unloaded the ornament box. Here’s a picture ornament! Here’s another one! Here’s the one where we all look crazy ‘cause we’re squinting into the sun!

Christmas will be different this year, won’t it?

Yeah, it will. We’re missing lots of things. We’re missing our base of operations. But Christmas has been changing for a few years, for always I suppose – children growing up, jobs and other activities making schedules hard to coordinate, Papaw hadn’t been able to go to Dollywood for a few years. Everything changes. The memories are…I almost said bittersweet, but there isn’t any bitter. The memories are sweet.

You should write about this for your blog.

I should. Because when your baby girl asks you to write about the sweet memories, that’s just what you do.