Christmas with My Characters

May we not spend Christmas or observe Christmas but rather keep  it.  ~ Peter Marshall

Christmas Day has come and gone. Seems each year it comes quicker and is overtaken by a New Year just as fast. Since we had our family Christmas gathering early this year, Christmas seemed to come and go faster than ever. But that’s just the traditions and busyness of Christmas.

Christmas can dwell in our hearts year around with maybe getting a little extra charge as December rolls along. The Christmas music you hear at every turn and all the Christmas lights you see as you travel along the roads and the way people smile at each other more even when they are stressed out with shopping for gifts and special grocery items for the meals they want to cook for their families – maybe all those things and more fire up our Christmas spirits. And as Peter Marshall advises in his quote, may we keep that feeling of Christmas joy in our hearts.

So now that my family celebrations are over, I want to take a moment to remember how a few of my characters celebrated Christmas. I love getting to write a Christmas scene in my stories. I like stepping back in time with my characters when Christmas expectations did seem simpler. Back in the 19^th century, many families had a much different celebration. Perhaps families decorated a tree. Perhaps they didn’t. They may have gone to church and I have no difficulty imagining my characters gathering as families to read the Christmas story from the Bible.

Families surely gathered to visit when they lived near one another. Stockings were hung by the fireplaces and filled with fruit and candy that were a special treat. Now, most of us can buy fruit and candy every week of the year if we choose instead of only buying it at Christmastime. Even in the 1930’s and 40’s Christmas was often a simpler celebration for many families.

I have celebrated Christmas with my characters in several of my books. I shared these a couple of years ago, but some stories can be retold.

In Summer of Joy, a story set in the 1960’s, my young heroine, Jocie, gets a new pen and notebook for Christmas. Of course, she’s ready to start writing down words and feelings right away. She, the same as I was at her age, is a journal writer at heart.

In the post I wrote a couple of years ago, I say she got a bike for Christmas, but when I looked back at the book to find the Christmas scene, I remembered that the bike was a birthday present – I think. I got to have a lot of fun writing about Christmas in that book. It might have summer in the title, but most of the story is set in the wintertime with snow and Christmas plays at church and special Christmas surprises and romantic scenes in spite of Leigh having a terrible cold.

Here’s the last paragraph of what Jocie wrote as she felt the love of her family surrounding her on that Christmas Day.

I’m glad some things change. I’m glad we have more people around our Christmas tree. I’m glad Dad and Leigh look so happy. I’m glad Wes is still telling me Jupiter stories. I’m glad Tabitha and Stephen Lee are here. I’m glad Aunt Love’s smiling more. I’m glad Zeb curls up on my feet to keep me warm when I sleep out on the back porch.

But I’m glad some things don’t change. Like the Lord. Like people loving other people a little extra at Christmastime. Like Dad and Wes loving me a little extra all the time. Like the Lord blessing people even when they don’t know what blessings they need.

Happy birthday, Jesus!

Then head back a few more years with me to 1945 and my story Love Comes Home. With Christmas only days away, Kate welcomes Jay home from World War II. You can be sure I loved writing a romantic first Christmas for them since they married right before he went overseas in 1942. Here’s a bit of that Christmas scene.

“What is it you want to find under the tree on Christmas morning?” Jay asked. He kept the ring he’d bought in Virginia secret in his pocket, glad he’d gotten something for her then, because now he couldn’t bear to let Kate out of his sight long enough to shop.

“You,” Kate whispered. “Only you.”

“But you’ve already got me.”

“Sometimes Christmas comes early.”

In These Healing Hills, it’s still 1945 with my midwife nurse, Fran, looking forward to a peaceful, joyful Appalachian Mountain Christmas.

When she thought about how her mother back in the city would be frantically decorating and planning for Christmas, Fran was glad to be in a cabin sitting by a warm fire with her dog at her feet. She had mailed her mother a pair of mittens Jeralene’s mother knitted and sent Harold a jar of sorghum molasses. Christmas shopping done.

She might go to Wendover on Christmas Day if Becca wasn’t having her baby. Or maybe she’d make cookies and stay right here at the Center to hand out treats to anybody who came by. She could even wrap up some to take to Granny Em. That way she could stop in at the Locke house. Just thinking about that made her smile. She’d bought a little cloth sack of thumb-sized handkerchief dolls from one of the mountain women. Mrs. Jessup said they were church babies. Fran couldn’t wait to give those to Sadie.

Don’t you just love the picture at the top of my post of the church babies I bought at a craft fair a few years ago? I loved working them into my Appalachian story.

So I’ve been able to celebrate Christmas with several different families. True, they are made-up families, but in my mind they became real as I wrote their stories. That made it extra fun to write them a blessed and merry Christmas. I pray that you all experienced the special joys of Christmas as you remembered the shepherds hearing angels sing, a baby born in a stable, and Mary pondering the wonder of it all in her heart. (Luke 2:19)

May you also keep the wonder and joy of Christmas in your hearts as you welcome in a New Year in a few days.

Do you like to read stories where the characters celebrate Christmas? Have you read these Christmas scenes in my stories?

Remember, if you leave a comment, you will be entered in the drawing for the last of my Christmas book giveaway here on One Writer’s Journal. I’ve already picked two winners, Deborah who chose my book,  River to Redemption. I sent the book out to her before Christmas. Then Janette was my 2nd winner. I haven’t heard from her yet, but it’s been a busy week for most people. I’ll email her again. I’ll pick the last winner in this giveaway on Sunday. But not to worry if you aren’t one of my winners this time. I’ll be giving away more books in 2024.