Every morning, my 2-year old comes upstairs, makes a beeline for the window, and plugs in the strands of white lights that we have hanging up. As soon as they light up, she claps her hands in glee and squeals “It’s so magical!”

It has seriously become my favorite part of every day.

At first, I tried to stop her. Not only did her trying to put the plug into the outlet freak me out a bit, but it also seemed…silly. “It’s light outside,” I’d say. “We have to wait until it’s dark.”

After a few days (when she would just plug them in when my back was turned), I stopped myself. What was I doing? Sure, you can’t see the lights as well during the day, but who cares? She obviously loved it. It brought her extreme amounts of pleasure. And it wasn’t hurting anything. Why was I saying no?

I was reminded of something that Julia Cameron teaches in her The Artist’s Way.

“When we put a stopper on our capacity for joy by anoretically declining the small gifts of life, we turn aside the larger gifts as well.”

It’s in the section on luxury and the problem so many of have of denying the smallest pleasures in the life – the things that can give us great amounts of joy.

I realized I was doing this to my child. I was also doing it to myself.

You see, I also love Christmas lights. They make me ridiculously happy. Yet I was allowing my practical side to win and deny both her and myself the simple joy – the luxury – of having the lights twinkle at us all day long.

Which is absolutely ridiculous.

Now when my daughter plugs in the lights and pronounces them magical, I feel my soul lighten. My face smiling. My heart softening. Like her, my soul delights in the magic of a single strand of twinkling lights.

And both of us are happier for it.