These lyrics are my love letter to the way December changes shape as we grow.
I started at the beginning. The soft, blurry childhood memories that still smell like cinnamon and cold air. A version of Christmas where you don’t understand time yet, or money, or loss. Just lights, magic, and people who love you.
Then the lyrics shift.
The same way life does.
Into the years where you move out, build a home of your own, and start creating your own version of Christmas. Leaning on what you were taught. Fixing what hurt. Inventing new traditions with the person you chose. That strange, beautiful moment where you go from being the kid in the story to the one setting the scene.
And then they move again.
Into parenthood.
Into that quiet click of realizing you’re now the memory maker. That you’re giving your kids the same thing you were once given. Not perfectly. Not without chaos. But with heart. That full circle ache of realizing you’re now the one shaping the Decembers they’ll one day look back on.
These lyrics hold all of that.
The nostalgia.
The shift.
The giving back.
The cycle of growing up, growing out, and growing into the person who makes this season meaningful for someone else.
You can listen to the entire project, A Very Canary Christmas, in The Cage.
