Small Town Mysteries. Big Time Suspense.
What are some favorite Christmas foods that you only make during the holidays? Spritz cookies are a Christmas only treat at my house. For years, my mom would make fried oysters for Christmas dinner, and that was the only time we would have them.
Let me know about your favorite Christmas foods.
What’s your least favorite Christmas song? You know the ones I mean. As soon as you hear it, you cringe inside and turn it off, if that’s possible. Sometimes it’s not the song itself, but a particular version of it. I heard Cher sing “O Holy Night” on the radio while driving and nearly ran off the road. I was used to how my mom sang it. She’s an opera-trained soprano. Hearing Cher launch into the high notes with her pop voice made it impossible to focus on my driving.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard a version of “Feliz Navidad” I like. I do like the upbeat tune, but the endlessly repeating lyrics makes me reach for the button or anti-anxiety meds.
So let me hear from you. Which one is your least favorite Christmas song?
What’s a favorite Christmas tradition in your family? I grew up with a lot of traditions. Both of my grandparents lived close to us after I was four years old, so we could visit them both at Christmas. Every Christmas Eve, we would drive to my dad’s parents’ house, have supper, and open my grandparents’ gifts to us kids. On Christmas morning, we opened our gifts from Santa at home. Then we’d go to my mom’s parents for a Christmas feast at lunch.
When I married, I had to merge my traditions with the ones my husband grew up with. Figuring out whether we would have a live or fake tree was a big decision in our marriage, which I wrote about in a humorous essay for the hardback version of Christmas fiction off the beaten path.
Now that we have kids, we’re developing our own traditions, such as watching the 1983 Christmas special, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, on Christmas Eve after we get home from the Christmas Eve service. My youngest has assigned himself the role of doing our outside decorations. Our front yard glows with lights everywhere and an army of inflatables, all connected with a maze of power cords. I really want to write a Christmas crime story in which the bad guy tries to escape the law at the climax but foolishly runs through someone’s front yard that’s decorated like mine and gets tripped up in all the cords.
So what’s one of your favorite Christmas traditions? Writers, have you used one of your traditions in a story?
JPC Allen Writes
