Holidays are coming! 'Christmas Brides' authors celebrate
It's almost time for all those "'Tis the season" headlines. Time to prepare for the holidays … and all the great holiday romances coming our way. So the authors of the Christmas Brides anthology are here to share what they're most looking forward to as the holidays approach. Not surprisingly, cookies are a recurring theme!
Suzanne Enoch, author of One Hot Scot
Ah, the holidays. Elsewhere it's snow days and winter coats and picturesque views out the front window. Here in Southern California the weather and view don't change all that much, but my house takes on a definite glitter.
I pull my fake tree, all 9 feet of it, out of the garage and with the help of the rest of the clan (my two sisters, two nephews, and mom and dad) get it fairly straight. Then, the nephews go to work. I love watching them decorate the tree, remembering the ornaments and the younger one gleefully putting 15 ornaments on one branch. Unless the tree becomes unbalanced, I leave it that way. It's art. I like the way every year the tree takes on the personality of the boys. I'll take that over perfection any day.
Then comes baking day. The clan comes back to my house (I have two ovens), and everybody gets assigned a cookie. I usually get the one that requires stirring and no baking. The older lad has qualified to bake with an assistant, while the younger one takes all the wrappers off the Hershey's Kisses and eats half of them. We spend all day together, reminiscing about past cookie day disasters and laughing as we (okay, me) get covered with flour. We make up plates for teachers, neighbors, and each other, clean up the kitchen, and lie on the floor for an hour or so to recover.
Finally, after advent calendars and a plethora of Christmas movies (Die Hard and Lethal Weapon are favorites), The Day arrives. After one year of trying to explain how Santa knew to bring presents for the nephews to my house when they didn't live there, we shifted Christmas Day back to my sister's house. The table groans with Danish, croissants, breakfast casseroles, and the inevitable crackers and cheeses. The adults eat as the boys open their gifts, and then we dive into the massive pile beneath the tree.
Now, I've seen A Christmas Story, where everyone rips open gifts at the same time like a shark feeding frenzy. At Enoch casa, though, we take turns. We thank each other for each gift, everyone gets to see what everyone else got, and there's a sense of family and appreciation rather than unbridled avarice. It definitely takes longer, but I'm all for anything that extends our time together as we sit around in our shorts with the a/c going and sing Christmas carols about this thing called snow.
Alexandra Hawkins, author of Once Upon a Christmas Scandal
This is my favorite time of year. The cooler weather and the upcoming holidays give me an excuse to close the laptop for a few days and enjoy our family's holiday traditions. One of my favorite things that I look forward to each year is the holiday baking. I used to tackle this task alone, but my 17-year-old daughter has caught the baking bug so we have been able to double our efforts.
We start in mid-November. Depending on our schedules, my daughter and I will bake one to four different types of cookies, bars, cakes and candies per week. Since it's too early for Christmas, we bake, bag and freeze our holiday treats until we have enough to assemble gift boxes for friends and family. Closer to Christmas, we bake the cookies, cake, etc. that can't be stored in the freezer. When we are finished, it's an insane amount of sweets — I think the current record is 27 different types of cookies — but it's our way of giving back to the family.
Another task I enjoy during the holidays is the decorating. When I was a child, my grandparents used to take us on a road trip to an old lodge where we could walk the land to select our Christmas tree. Just like National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation we would chop down our tree, and my brother and I would sit in front of the lodge's huge hearth and eat Christmas cookies while my grandfather secured the tree to the car. It was a wonderful way to spend the afternoon, and, thankfully, unlike the movie, no wildlife ever hitched a ride in the pine tree.
Looking back on those trips to the lodge, it seems very idyllic and a bit old-fashioned, but I loved it. For years, I thought all families celebrated Christmas this way. My husband was always a tad envious when I used to talk about the Christmases in my childhood because his mom insisted on an artificial tree. He saw nothing exciting or memorable about what he referred to as "sticking oversized pipe cleaners into a green metal pole." So when it was time for us to create our own holiday traditions, he wholly rejected the idea of having an artificial tree, which was fine with me.
The old Christmas lodge with its tree farm closed when I was a teenager, and more than 20 years have passed since my husband and I moved from Illinois to Georgia. However, no matter how busy we are, we always take the kids out to find our perfect Christmas tree. I unbox the lights every year because it's something my mom always did, and we decorate the tree as a family listening to Mannheim Steamroller's Christmas albums and the Vince Guaraldi Trio's A Charlie Brown Christmas playing in the background.
That warm thought brings me to the third and most important reason why I look forward to Christmas: family. I tuck away my to-do list and count my blessings. My husband and kids are happy and safe. Our house is filled with Christmas music, love and laughter — and the air is flavored with a hint of cinnamon and whatever is baking in the oven. In that moment, all worries are forgotten and life is perfect.
Elizabeth Essex, author of The Scandal Before Christmas
The three things I am looking forward to with the greatest anticipation this Christmas are: cookies, decorating the tree and Christmas "cheer." But mostly cookies.
At the Essex abode all of our varied and sundry Christmas traditions go to one purpose: making sure our odd, creaky old house is a place filled with comfort and joy. And therefore cookies. This year there will undoubtedly be even more cookies than usual because the eldest Essex sprig has been away at college. I want to make sure all the wreaths are hung in the windows to light her way up the drive, and then, when she opens the front door, the heavenly aroma of fresh-baked cookies will come wafting on out to welcome her home. But I'm sure I'll have to make several batches of cookies beforehand, and taste-test them extensively, just to make sure I get them right.
Once everyone is home, it's time to get the perfect Christmas tree. It would be best if the weather were dodgy — the colder and filthier the day, the fewer hours we are likely to spend tromping around the hillsides with the dogs and bickering about which tree is best. I will exert my executive/mom privilege of the veto anyway, and get the tree I want. But I know any hard feelings can be eased with a cup full of our traditional holiday "cheer" — warm eggnog well-laced with whisky if the day is cold, or chilled champagne punch if the Southern winter day proves warm. (Please do be assured that there will also be non-alcoholic versions for the kids and dogs. We're not that cheerful.)
Then I'll dive straight into the decorations. This used to be exclusively my province, but now that all of the Essex sprigs have reached the Age of Superior Opinion, I will just unpack the boxes of tissue paper-wrapped ornaments and hand them off. I'll rearrange the lop-sided configuration later, when everyone else is in bed, or too full of Christmas "cheer" to care if their special "Lucky Nut" ornament has been moved to the top of the tree.
And when that is done, I am quite certain I will sit back and marvel at the loveliness, and savor every last unruly comfort and untidy joy of my opinionated, enthusiastic family. And eat more cookies.
Valerie Bowman, author of It Happened Under the Mistletoe
I love the holiday season! It's such a cozy, comfy time of year. This year, the three things I'm looking forward to are mostly the same things I look forward to every year: eating delicious food, decorating with my family, and snuggling up and reading books!
It would be a big, bold lie to say I cook. I don't. Ever. I do make an exception once a year, however, and it's not even for Thanksgiving. Each Christmas, I make a big pot of beef stew. It's really simple, just carrots, potatoes, celery, onions and beef in a gravy-like sauce. It's my mom's recipe and it's absolutely delicious. I make it with big, fluffy biscuits and a chocolate cake for dessert. It's one of the major holiday events I look forward to. But I'm not done there. Nope. After I make this feast, I snuggle up in my new Christmas jammies (who doesn't love some new Christmas jammies? — the softer the better, I say) and watch a marathon of The Lord of the Rings with my family. We watch all three of the DVDs (extended version). My Christmas just wouldn't be complete without this tradition!
Decorating the tree and the house is my second-favorite Christmasy activity. My family usually picks a Saturday in early December to get all the decorations out of the garage. I like to keep things simple, so we don't have a huge amount of decorations, just a tree with trimmings, candle lights for the windows, stockings and some candles. I also make sure my whole house smells like apple cinnamon all Christmas season long. It's a scent I adore. As we decorate the tree, we listen to Christmas carols, drink hot chocolate and take pictures. We often wear funny Christmas hats and crack each other up. We've been known to put a Santa hat on the dog.
Finally, one of my most guilty holiday pleasures is taking a week off and reading! I don't get to read nearly as often as I'd like to during the year. The week between Christmas and New Year's is a real treat for me. I've been stockpiling my TBR list for months! I'm a slow reader so I'll only get through a handful of books, but it's going to be so much fun! This Christmas, if you like to read like I do, I hope you'll consider putting Christmas Brides on your list and that you have as much fun reading the stories as we did writing them.
Wait, did you say only three? Because now I'm dreaming about peppermint ice cream …
Happy Holidays, everyone!
Find out more about these authors and their books at their websites: