Home for the Holidays: With Ben and Erin Napier
Home for the holidays isn’t one big moment. It’s made up of small things that repeat themselves until they start to feel like memory.
For me, it smells like wood smoke and pancakes and bacon cooked for supper. It looks like movie nights every night in December, all of us in pajamas, piled together. Those are the moments my mind goes back to when I’m having a long day — the ordinary rhythms that remind me where I belong.
This year, I’ve been more aware than ever of how quickly December fills up. There’s always something else to do, somewhere else to be. I’ve found myself pushing back against that, choosing to stay home more, because I know this is where most of the magic of childhood actually lives. These are the moments our girls are storing away without realizing it. One day, when they’re grown and feel homesick, I hope this is what they’re missing.
Motherhood has changed the holidays for me. I don’t really want gifts anymore. What I want is time. Time with our girls, time with my parents, time together while everyone is healthy and under the same roof. People talk about how fleeting these years are, but you don’t fully understand it until you watch your children growing right in front of you.
Slowing down, for me, has mostly meant saying no. Saying no to things that pull us away from home so we can say yes to being present here.
This time of year at home feels like the candles that are always in my parents’ windows. It's the soft glow of the tree in our living room and fireplace embers late at night. The candlelight service on Christmas Eve. When everything is lit that way, the world feels calmer somehow.
There are small traditions I hope our girls carry with them. Christmas Toast is one of them which is Hawaiian bread with Irish butter, sugar and cinnamon, toasted just right. It’s Helen’s favorite. I hope one day they make it for their own children and remember where it came from.
Ben has his own quiet rhythms that shape the season. During Advent, there are mornings when he’s up early, tending fires throughout the house with a cup of coffee and the Mississippi Market Bulletin. Eventually one of the girls will wander in and sit with him. The fire and the Christmas tree change the light in the room, and the smell of wood smoke and coffee settles in. Those moments feel like home to me, too.
And while music fills our house all year, at Christmas it feels more intentional. Ben wraps the presents and handles the lights and garland. The girls want bright and colorful but I lean more traditional. Ben usually lands somewhere in between, trying to give us all a little of what we love. Of course he’s always thinking of us.
Some traditions carry more meaning than you’d expect. We have a stuffed animal nativity set that Ben’s mother made for us, the same one she made when he was little. He sings Away in a Manger to the girls throughout the season because it reminds him of his daddy. Those songs, sung again and again, have a way of staying with you.
And then there are the Christmas lights. We don’t just see them once, we see all of them, and we see them every year in a certain order. During Love Week, we walk through Mason Park when it’s lit up. After the Cookie Stroll downtown, we go through Prancer Path. On another night, we pile into one of our old cars and drive to a few favorite spots around town. And before Christmas comes, we always make our way out to the big drive-through display on Matthews Road.
It’s one of Ben’s favorite traditions, something he’s carried with him from childhood into fatherhood. We ride through the dark together, looking out the windows, pointing things out, sitting close. It never feels rushed, and it never gets old. There’s something about being together like that surrounded by light, with nowhere else to be that feels like home to me.
Our home during the holidays certainly isn't about having everything perfectly together. It’s about being together long enough for the moments to take root. It’s about creating a place that calls you back, year after year.
