As I write to you, a civil war is underway in my family group message. Here’s the dilemma: coordinating Christmas pajamas. What could be more contentious?

I am the oldest child, and it has been posited by my wonderful younger sister that I am, perhaps, bossy. I deny this. I am just looking out for everyone’s best interests. And, trust me, it is in everyone’s best interest to be absolutely awash in scarlet red stripes by way of J. Crew.

Don’t tell this to my sister, though. She wants the Scotties. And I like Scottie dogs, but, well, you just have to see them. Then you would get it.

I have picked the Christmas pajamas every year since my children were born—so that makes four, which, need I remind everyone, is not a lot. Christmas pajamas are an important part of their childhood memories, and I need these pictures to be perfect. And they will be if they are in those stripes.

Hold on. I need to take a deep breath.

What will make her see that the stripes are the answer? That stripes are the reason for the season? That we cannot live without these stripes!

Another deep breath.

I saw a cheesy mom-stagram post recently stating that in adulthood, you realize that holiday magic is just the immense love of your parents. I know this to be true. Even before matching pajamas were the standard, my mom and dad made every Christmas one for the books.

I remember the year I got a Barbie Polaroid camera. We still have the snapshots of my parents from Christmas morning, complete with tired eyes as the pre-sunrise darkness isolated their faces in the harsh flash.

And then there was the year they decked out my and my sister’s bedrooms with more Christmas lights than Clark Griswold’s front yard. The surprise of a Christmas lifetime.

What I find truly remarkable about my parents, and I’m sure many of you feel the same about yours, is that they have found a way to only increase the magic as we have grown older. Sure, we are in on the bit now. But the realization that Santa isn’t the one bringing the gifts has never made anything less exciting in my childhood home.

Our favorite tradition started when my sister and I were of drinking age—or close. On Christmas Eve, we gather for a dinner for the ages. An absolute feast brought to life through my dad’s culinary prowess. We open presents between courses of lobster and homemade gnocchi. We laugh. We pop Champagne. And then we change into THE pajamas.

Are the pajamas key to the Christmas magic? You tell me. What I will say, though, is that I’m just not sure how the night will progress if we aren’t in those stripes designed by J. Crew, I think, specifically for us.

While you wait to learn which pajamas my family dons on Christmas morning, and the fate of my cherished family group message, you should click here and here to dive into the holiday homes of two local families, both of whom are as crazy about Christmas as I, apparently, am about sleepwear.

I hope your holidays are merry, bright and filled with plenty of peppermint stripes.

Looking forward,

Riley Bienvenu Bourgeois, Editor