The author’s daughter Natalee with great-grandparents Martha Faulkner, left, and Pat and Dale Nicholson Sr., right.

So this is Christmas, a holiday season that just means more — even in memory.

Those TV ads for the Southeastern Conference caught my attention the other day. You know, the ones that say football in the South “just means more.”

Just like the sights, sounds and smells of the season, the analogy hit me. Christmas is filled with meaning, and it’s never more than a memory away.

If I’ve learned anything from my family, it is to take advantage of the spirit of the season, to do more for others, and to remember that the keys to Christmas aren’t money or material goods, but good times and special moments.

It’s those trips from Tulsa to Little Rock that seemed to take days in my 5-year-old mind — those visits to my grandparents’. It’s Granddad Dale taking me to the State Capitol to stare in awe at the largest Christmas tree I’d ever seen.

It’s Grandma Pat’s homemade bread and strawberry jam. Or Grandma Faulkner’s pumpkin bread, a memory so ingrained in my brothers and me that all Nicholson granddaugthers-in-law seek the recipe from her. (There’s your holiday homework, Emily!)

It’s all those memories of Granddad Faulkner singing Christmas hymns so vividly. I can still hear all the joy he poured into “Joy to the World.” Even now, at my third Christmas without him, my inner ear can hear his voice bellowing “And Heaven and nature sing,” with such fervor that it’s all I can do to fight back the tears.

Christmas is also my dad spotting those pesky scout elves double-checking the list, sending my brothers and me darting to the windows to catch a glimpse of Santa’s helpers on patrol. We never saw one, and my kids still haven’t either. But they’re out there, so you’d better be good!

It’s my mom loading us up in that old Chevy Suburban in Orlando, Florida, for a Christmas lights cruise in our sweatshirts and shorts (oh, those harsh Florida winters).

One of my two brothers lives in New York now. We see each other a couple of times a year, if we’re lucky. But every other Christmas, we spend time together, all of us, reconnecting as adulthood spreads our visits farther apart. My brother arrives a few days before Christmas and leaves shortly after the big day.

“I like the leadup more than the holiday itself,” he says. We all do. It’s the magic of the season and the time together that we value, not the exchanging of gifts.

I’m fortunate enough to have one last grandparent still living. She turns 90 this month. And, because of the rock star she is, all her 41 kids, grandkids and great-grandkids will gather at Martha Faulkner’s house on Christmas Day. Gifts will be given, but that’s not what we’ll remember. For my kids, like it was for my brothers and me, it will be the pumpkin bread, peanut butter fudge and the big ol’ hug from Grandma they look forward to the most.

I know as the decibels grow to a deafening level, as is common at a Faulkner Christmas, we’ll all still hear Granddad belting out “Joy to the World” somewhere in our hearts. That’s the gift my grandparents gave us that will last forever, and it didn’t cost a thing.

We relive what the Grinch discovered: Christmas doesn’t come from a store.

It’s something that means more.