by M. L. Buchman
I was born into a house divided.
Okay, not Shakespeare, but definitely two attitudes about Christmas. My Mom adored the tree and decorations. Dad, well, calling him a humbug might be kindly. It made Christmas such a stressful time that I avoided invitations and Christmas parties for most of the decade after college. Friends eventually convinced me it might possibly maybe even be a time of fun and food...perhaps. (Oy vey! Even for someone technically Jewish, I was slow to catch on. And no, it wasn't being Jewish that bothered Dad, he just reveled in being grumpy about Christmas.)
Then I got a family: wife and stepkid (6yo). OMG! Talk about a world transformed. My wife starts watching for Christmas ideas in...January! (What's up with that?) She's the queen of the perfect present. And there are a thousand little household traditions wrapped around the event. The December road trip up to the faux-Bavarian resort town of Leavenworth, WA to listen to the band playing carols in a snowy gazebo while sipping hot cocoa, and buying that year's new ornament at their massive Christmas store.
My first Christmas en famille was beyond revelatory! Sleigh bells from the family's old Nova Scotia farm (dating back before the American Revolution) were rattled across the rooftop soon after the kid went to bed. Trees, treats, food...those few, perfect presents were far more important than any bounty my upper middle class upbringing might have garnered.
I fell in LOVE with Christmas! Now, even in January, yes, I have my eyes out for that one perfect thing to be hidden away until the season catches up with us once again. With the kid grown and gone (and sadly unable to visit this year, but we aren't focusing on that), and us having happily downsized significantly, our little Christmas tree only gets the very best ornaments from decades of gathering.
Why it took me a decade from that first-ever real Christmas to write my first Christmas novel, I'll never know! But, without my really noticing, it became an entire series and I never looked back.
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And more happened in the middle of that.
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But it didn't stop there.
One day, I looked down at my 100+ short stories and realized, there was a whole lot of Christmas there.
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Have I become a complete and total Christmas freak? You be the judge. Just make sure you're signed up for my newsletter, so that you'll be reminded of when I post my free Christmas short story on Dec. 14th. ...and, there just may be two Christmas tales this year. :)
Yeah, that's how much a family changed my life for the better. In a thousand ways, but one of those was most definitely celebrating the spirit of Christmas. And I do my very best to pass that on to you with my words. I hope this season finds you safe and happy.
USA
Today and Amazon #1 Bestseller M. L. "Matt" Buchman has 60+ action-adventure
thriller and military romance novels, 100 short stories, and lotsa audiobooks. PW
says: “Tom Clancy fans open to a strong female lead will clamor for more.”
Booklist declared: “3X Top 10 of the Year.”
A
project manager with a geophysics degree, he’s designed and built houses, flown
and jumped out of planes, solo-sailed a 50’ sailboat, and bicycled solo around
the world…and he quilts. More at: www.mlbuchman.com.
4 comments:
Well reading your post certainly put me in the mood for the holiday season. I decorate for every season there is.
This was a fun post, Matt. You've certainly made up for lost time!
Hooray for love and a good marriage! I've been to Leavenworth and it is the closest thing to a Bavarian village I've found outside of Bavaria. Love that place.
My DH is a Christmas freak. Long before we were married, he collected holiday decorations on his travels around the world. He has decorations from Germany, Canada, Senegal, Rwanda, Kenya (he spent a lot of years in Africa), Greece, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia (before war broke them into smaller nations), and I can't remember the others. The house decorating would begin the day after Thanksgiving and stay through the first week of January.
I'm so glad you found the spirit of Christmas with your family. I have many friends of other religious beliefs (or none) who celebrate Christmas because of the outpouring of love that is contagious. I'll have to check out those books. I never knew you had that many centered around Christmas. Hooray!
My wife and stepkid certainly changed my attitude. And my writing as you can see by all of the Christmas tales I've told. Changed all for the better and looking forward to many years to come! (Maggie, tell your DH that my DW is waving Christmas socks at him. That's what she's knitting at the moment.) :)
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