We put up the Christmas tree this weekend. Nothing extravagant—just the familiar ritual of lights, ornaments, and the little negotiations over where each piece should go. But after we were done, our 20-year-old Japanese exchange student quietly said, “This is my first time doing this.”
I asked, a little surprised, “Ever?”
And he replied—proudly and confidently, with the kind of clarity he didn’t have when he arrived three months ago—“Ever.”
In Japan, Christmas isn’t the holiday it is here—more a light-filled season than a cultural cornerstone. (Turns out most homes don’t put up trees and the celebration leans social rather than traditional.) But that wasn’t the part that struck me.
What landed was the reminder that a “first time” can show up at any age.
We talk about time as if it’s symmetrical and shared. But our experiences with it—what traditions we inherit, what customs surround us, what rhythms we grow up inside—are wildly different. Some things arrive early. Some things arrive late. Some arrive only when we move across the world and end up decorating a tree with people we didn’t know a year ago.
It’s easy to look at someone else’s timeline and think, How have you never done this?
But curiosity serves us far better than judgment. We get to learn how other people’s lives have unfolded. We get to be part of a first moment for someone else. And we’re reminded that our own lives still have firsts waiting for us, too.
Time doesn’t just pass. It shapes each of us differently.
And those differences aren’t shortcomings—they’re openings.
