It’s hard to believe that we are seeing another year coming to an end. It seems to me that time goes faster and faster with each week.

The end of another year, however, means that my favorite season of the year is fast approaching. I am an unabashed lover of Christmas. I start thinking about Christmas lights around Halloween and I can’t wait to take out the boxes of candles, little village houses, garland and wreaths.

The whole world seems like a better place when the air smells of cinnamon candles and evergreens and there’s a fire in the fireplace. Cookies in the oven and a house full of grandkids make it even better.

Christmas always reminds me how lucky I am to have both my daughters nearby and all my grandkids close enough that I can see them any time I want to. So many of my peers are an airplane trip away from the people they love most in the world.

The season is a reminder of how important it is to hold family and friends close and to maintain the traditions that create the memories that add to each and every Christmas that goes by.

When I was a kid, we generally locate and cut a Christmas tree from somewhere on the farm. My dad would spot a few that he thought might be suitable and would coax them along with an eye to harvesting them at the right time. He loved the moment when it was time to plug in the lights. I think the memory of how happy he always looked at this time of the year is one reason that I feel so happy when Christmas is approaching.

He also loved fudge. My mom always poured it out of the pot and onto a big, white platter that she put on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator. Dad would sneak a piece after dinner, cutting it off the edge of the platter with his pocket knife. Somehow, my mom’s fudge never quite set up completely. At room temperature it was stretchy like taffy. I never did figure out how she managed to consistently have it come out that way.

This year marks the first that I won’t be getting a box of candy and cookies from the kitchen of my baby sister. We lost her last January. This year, I’ll make a box of mixed treats and mail it to each of my siblings in her memory.

I usually make the season’s first batch of fudge on the day after Thanksgiving and that weekend is also usually the first for making sugar cookies. My grandkids call them “painted cookies” because I make up little bowls of different colors of frosting and get out an assortment of artist paint brushes for them to use to decorate them.

I like to think they will remember those afternoons of powdered sugar and food colors years from now. I hope they smile at the memory and that they look forward to holiday seasons with joy.