Holiday Traditions

I come from a family with three sisters and a brother which made the Christmas holidays fun because there were a lot of presents under the tree! For the first seventeen years of my life, Dad was in the Air Force and that meant moving every few years, but regardless of whether we lived in South Carolina, Florida, Georgia or Texas; Japan or Kwajalein, our Christmas traditions arrived right along with the Mayflower Moving Van.

We always got a Life Saver^© story book; we hung stockings on a pretend fireplace. We girls dressed alike in outfits Mom had made for midnight church service on Christmas Eve.  And we would always peek under Mom’s bed because that’s where she always hid the Christmas presents. (My own children were well into college before I quit giving them Life Saver^© storybooks.)

One of my holiday traditions was writing Christmas stories for my family and friends. Over the years there were stories about Christmases in the past, Christmas ghosts, holiday memories and even lumberjacks who helped Santa. One of these stories, "Once upon a Christmas Wish" was about a small coal mining town in Pennsylvania called Snow. Even in the midst of the coal mine shutting down, the children of the town decided to celebrate the holiday with a snow sculpture festival. This story so captured me that I decided to write a mainstream novel based in Snow. Again, the snow festival was such a huge part of the story that I even invented a fictitious website all about the town and its many businesses. 

That story is "Always Believe". It’s a story about family and friendships and maybe even a miracle or two. Emma doesn't believe in the enchantment of Christmas, but then she and her dad move to Snow, where even the stores have holiday names. What is she supposed to think when her new friend, Charlie, pulls her into the magic of the holiday by insisting he knows the location of Santa's workshop?

Letters to Santa tend to be another tradition of the holiday. But what happens when a typographical error causes hundreds of letters to Santa to end up at a Chicago Cosmetic Company? Because of an error in ad copy, CEO Chantilly Morrison is inundated with letters from children, whose scribbled wishes tug at her heart. She hires an investigator to find the letter writers so she can throw a huge Christmas party and make the children's fantasies come true. AJ Anderson can find the unfindable, whether it's lost artifacts or people and he's very good at his job. But when Chanti dumps hundreds of letters in his lap with the directive to find the children -- before Christmas Eve -- he knows the request is impossible, but the woman is irresistible. Should he use his skills to make her Christmas wish come true, or can he use the countdown to Christmas to find the key that unlocks the lady's heart?

I wish you all the best of the holidays, in whatever way you celebrate and with whatever traditions you hold dear. If one of your traditions just happens to be reading a fun holiday story, I invite you to grab a copy of “Always Believe” or “If Wishes Were Magic”, both available from http://bookswelove.net/authors/baldwin-barbara-romance/

Barbara Baldwin

http://www.authorsden.com/barbarajbaldwin