The aftermath of the Christmas holidays is always quieter in theory than in practice.

On a typical day, attendance in my house is light: me, the dog, the parrot, and my husband when he comes home from work. But every December, our home turns into a train station. Who’s arriving, who’s departing, who’s moving for Christmas break, who’s stopping in “just for dinner” but staying for three hours. It’s impossible to track. The schedule is fluid. The guest list is fictional. The food court never closes.

By the end of it, the refrigerator and pantry doors have been worked so hard they’re creaking, begging for a break. The front door functions like a revolving door, swinging open and shut with bags, coats, hugs, leftovers, and the occasional “Wait, did you grab the cookies?”

The couches are buried under blankets and pillows from late-night movie marathons. On every flat surface: the graveyard of half-drunk Starbucks holiday drinks, skeletal popcorn bowls, and beef jerky wrappers that appear to multiply overnight. It’s loud. It’s chaotic. And no one ever knows how many people will actually be joining us for dinner, which is how you end up with a refrigerator full of leftovers that eventually migrate back to the kids’ refrigerators in their own homes like food completing a seasonal round trip.

Sleeping in? A nice idea, but unrealistic. Someone always has early-morning breakfast plans. Someone else needs coffee now. And my daughter’s puppy needs to go outside, except she’s still in her pajamas, it’s freezing, and suddenly it’s, “Daddy, can you take the puppy out?” When the puppy comes back in, he must, by law, jump on everyone and make sure the whole house is awake and ready to play.

And then, just like that, it ends. The house exhales. The doors rest. The blankets get folded. The noise fades.

What’s left is the quiet after the holidays, the beautiful, slightly eerie calm after a season that ran loud, full, and exactly the way it should.

And yet, these are the moments that make the holidays what they are. The noise. The mess. The constant motion. These are the details that don’t show up in photos but linger long after the decorations come down.

I feel incredibly blessed knowing that no matter where my children are or how busy their lives become, this house will always be their home base. It’s the place they orbit back to, sometimes briefly, sometimes loudly, often with extra people and animals in tow.

Waking up in the morning to a house full of people, and the pets they bring with them, is the best Christmas gift I could ask for, even when it’s chaotic, even when it’s noisy. Because when the house finally quiets, and the doors stop swinging, what remains is the quiet proof that we were all here.

As the house settles back into its familiar rhythm, I find myself wishing the same for all of you. I hope your holidays met you where you were and gave you what you needed. And that the new year brings blessings, love, and the warmth of special family moments, both the loud and chaotic ones as well as the quiet, sacred pauses in between.