Christmas returns each year as a gentle promise: light in the darkest days, warmth in the midst of cold. Streets light up, homes smell of pine and cinnamon, and for a moment, time seems to slow down. But it is precisely there that its transience lies. For even before the candles have burned out, the light is packed away.

The tree loses its shine, ornaments disappear into boxes, and what seemed sacred yesterday becomes routine today. Christmas reminds us how fleeting meaning can be when we pin it to moments and décor.

Yet this fleeting nature is not a flaw, but an invitation: not to keep the light for just one week, but to practice it throughout the year. Perhaps Christmas is not meant to stay, but to point the way. Toward attention, kindness, and closeness, values that need no calendar.

And so Christmas fades away each year, not to abandon us, but to remind us that what truly matters only lives as long as we carry it.