What do I love about Christmas? How about everything! J When Emily offered me the opportunity to explain further, I wasn’t sure what to write about as there are so many things I enjoy about the holiday. But as I thought, I realised they all have one thing in common – a sense of ritual. From the peeling of approximately twenty million potatoes on Christmas Eve to the warming of mince pies at 11am on Christmas Day ready for the return of the church-goers, they’re things that have been a constant since my childhood, even while we’ve welcomed new family members and, more sadly, bidden farewell to others.
Exhausted
after a day of rooting through presents
One
of my favourite rituals is decorating my tree.
I used to have a very tasteful set of matching ornaments, bought from
one of the big stores But about ten years
ago a friend gave me a tree decoration of a ship in a bottle, knowing my love
of Age of Sail (nothing at all to do with uniforms and breeches, of course). That started me on a different path.
My tree is now a very long
way from elegant, hosting an eclectic range of ornaments, but each one of them
holds a good memory, be it a gold-dipped aspen leaf from a holiday in Colorado,
a brass biplane from a trip to Bruges, or the wooden rocking horse from a local
shop bought on a day out with friends. And
then there’s the rather extraordinary tree-topper angel that my sister brought
back for me from a trip to Finland.
So
each year, ten days before Christmas Day, I warm myself a mince pie, pour a
glass of sherry, and decorate the tree.
I buy a new ornament every year so that it remains a living tradition. This
year, I’m on the hunt for a wolf ornament to commemorate the year I’ve spent writing
my Strength of the Pack series.
To celebrate the series nearing its conclusion (there is one last book to come), I’m offering an ebook from the series to a randomly drawn commenter on this post. It’s the winner’s choice as to which book, and details of each book are on my website here.
And
if you’d like to share what rituals you enjoy over the holiday period – or have
any suggestions about how to keep a Labrador out of the piles of presents under
the tree – I’d love to hear them!
Author Bio:
Joy Lynn Fielding is a sucker for happy endings.
She believes, however, that if characters don’t suffer along the way, they
won’t fully appreciate being happy. Not all of her characters thank her for
this viewpoint, but what do they know?
Joy lives in a small English market town, and also
inhabits a number of fictional worlds at any one time, reflecting what she’s
writing and what she’s reading. She has a tendency to share the latest
fascinating facts she’s stumbled across in her research for books with anyone
who will listen. Thankfully she has a very patient Labrador who has a gift for
looking as though he’s interested in what she’s saying while he waits for the
food to arrive.
