The stories your family tells every holiday are raw material. Write them down before they’re gone.

The stories that get retold every holiday are already polished. Somebody has tested them on an audience twenty times and cut the boring parts, which is most of what writing is. They carry names, weather, arguments and jokes you would never invent on your own. They also live in one or two people, and people do not stay forever.

Ask an older relative to tell you one of them again and record it on your phone, or write it out that night while the voices are still in your head. You do not have to do anything with it yet. Having it is enough.