The bell on the wreath tinkled as I opened the door; inside the Villa smelled of cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg—the spices of mulled wine—mingled with the scent of fresh greenery. The room looked as homey and welcoming as it always did at this time of year, as if I’d arrived to stay with friends for the holidays and someone was going to appear and offer to whisk away my suitcase to a bedroom. Instead, Frankie looked up from behind the bar where she was busy working on something—probably more decorations—when she heard the door close. She smiled and I knew she was waiting for my reaction.

When Eli, Mia, and I were growing up my mother had impressed on the three of us that the true meaning of Christmas was not about material things or the gifts we received, but what we gave back. It was also about intangible qualities like kindness, friendship, generosity, a giving heart, and a helping hand. She’d explained that it wasn’t always “the most wonderful time of the year” or a picture-postcard Hallmark movie for a lot of folks whose loneliness, hardship, and losses were especially hard to bear during the holidays. As a result we were expected to help with her many charities, whether it was collecting used winter coats for the people who slept in the street, gifts and books for children in the homeless shelter in Leesburg, or canned goods for the food pantry in Aldie—and then delivering them to their destinations.

But my most enduring memory of my mother at Christmas was how she seemed to effortlessly make our home and the winery into gathering places for friends and strangers, filled with laughter and music and happiness. I found out later that what had motivated her was her own loneliness after moving to Virginia when she married Leland, how homesick she had been for her home and family in France. Now that I was running the winery, I wanted these things, too—especially because the world seemed a harsher, more troubled, and angrier place than I remembered from my sepia-tinted childhood memories.