Hogwarts Castle, Harry Potter. Warner Bros. Warner Studio.

Public domain stock image, Pixabay. Published under Creative Commons CC0 Universal Public Domain Dedication License, 2016.

There are many things in this world worth waiting for, but the ones I enjoy never seem to be easy.

I simply cannot wait the few precious seconds for pizza to cool. This started at an early age when my family would visit Pizza Hut, the epitome of 1980s dine-in experiences. There, a personal pan of molten magma-like mozzarella would sit before me that I couldn’t resist immediately shoving in my mouth. My parents would stare, apologizing to onlookers as I tried to breathe and cool my airways simultaneously. The first bite is all I ever tasted as I successfully burned the delicate skin on the roof of my mouth off.

Gardening is a challenge, too. I hate waiting for vegetables to grow. Every year, I curse carrots for their snail-paced germination, and let all manner of profanity fly while tapping my toes waiting on pumpkins. Give me the humble radish any day, especially when it’s served with a smear of butter and a dash of salt.

I dislike waiting to give people gifts. My spouse, Lauren, can testify to this. Like the late Richard Burton gifting presents to his wife, Elizabeth Taylor, I sometimes end up giving Lauren surprises just because it’s Tuesday.

Yet, for some unknown reason, a tradition that Lauren and I started together requires a bit of waiting for us to do it properly.

While some families break out “White Christmas,” “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” or “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” (the latter was the go-to in my house growing up), Lauren and I grab our own official holiday kickoff movie on the evening of Thanksgiving.

We’ve waited with hope.

We’ve waited with joy.

We have done so peacefully through scratched DVDs, continued with the arrival of Blu-rays, and now, yet again, with a legal Amazon download purchase. We did this before children, a time when we could watch the film uninterrupted from start to finish. We continue to do it with our children, a time filled with constant interruptions, including but not limited to one of them screaming from the bathroom for one of us to come wipe their butt.

You see, no matter the season of life, when the holiday season beckons and Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” is unleashed at the stroke of midnight on November 1, we begin our faithful tradition of binging the entire Harry Potter movie series. We attempt to watch one of the eight films a week, building up to Christmas. However, since the arrival of offspring, I don’t know if we’ve ever completed the task, but we consistently bat over .400, which is Hall of Fame-worthy when you compare it to baseball batting averages.

I don’t know why Harry Potter is a Christmas movie for us. Maybe it’s the scene of Hagrid dragging that giant Christmas tree outside the castle of Hogwarts in “The Sorcerer’s Stone”? Perhaps it’s the picture of heavy snow covering Hogwarts or the wizarding village of Hogsmeade? Maybe it’s my childhood longing to look out the window of The Three Broomsticks while sipping a warm butterbeer that puts me in a festive mood or the dream of attending a Yule Ball and asking Professor McGonagall, played by the late Dame Maggie Smith, for a dance? Honestly, I don’t know, and I confess, I’m not sure if I ever want to pinpoint the mystery of it all because if I could name it, I’m afraid it would lose some of its alluring potency.

All I know is that this ritual gives Lauren and me meaning — enough to invoke it each year and expose our kids to it. I’ve come to see the rituals I have in my life as doors. They can be opened and invite me to pass through and, in turn, be closed and left to mark the passing of the former as I move into the future.

Rituals help us name a moment, a specific time we anticipate in our lives, and at least in this singular aspect of my “I want it now” mentality, it’s helping me understand that there are some things worth waiting for.

Be it the coming of Christmas or the longing for the appropriate time to binge Harry Potter, here’s to waiting on whatever kind of magic this time of year brings you.