I’d like to welcome Sara from Reading the Blues Away to the blog today to give us a glimpse into her holiday memories and traditions! She has perfectly captured what I think we all love about Christmas. (Pictures added by Jana from online sources.)

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Hi guys! It’s Sara from over at Reading the Blues Away. The most wonderful time of year for me is from Halloween to the New Year. It is filled with so much love, happiness, and charity. My family used to have many traditions for this time of year but as my sister and I have gotten older and things in our family have changed many of these traditions have went away. I miss the ones that have disappeared but I hope to bring them back when I have a family of my own. These are the 13 traditions I hope to bring back or keep for my future family (13 just because I love the number).

1. Yard time!
October is when the world begins to change in my neck of the woods. The temperature finally gets comfortable. The leaves start turning beautiful colors and falling to the ground. Saturdays mean playing in these leaves. Raking them into piles to burn, or to stuff in the garbage bags that look like pumpkins for decoration.

2. Family time!
Thanksgiving is for family. With everyone having different schedules it has been years since we have actually gotten to have Thanksgiving dinner on Thanksgiving Day. This doesn’t really make a difference for the spirit of the holiday but to me it just feels different. I want to be able to bring Thanksgiving dinner back to Thanksgiving Day. Food, family, starting Christmas movies, one entire day with no outside interference just being with the ones we love.

3. Parades!
Watching Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade has always been my favorite thing. No one else in my family likes to watch it, which I do not understand. I love watching the musicals and Broadway shows that do scenes. Seeing all the families, the happy children, and hearing the news anchors talk about their family plans after the parade makes me so happy. Like a glimpse into other people’s lives.

4. Food drives!
I was brought up to help others in any way possible when you are able. Donating food is one way we would help others. My school, the local churches, and other organizations in the area always had food drives to help people thru the holiday season. It is always a priority to donate as much as we can to help as many people as possible. One year we were even on the receiving end of these donations, which reinforces the urge to help even more.

5. Trees!
I am a live tree person. I know it is horrible for all those trees to be cut down every year but I really don’t like artificial trees. My family has an artificial tree now but I will be going back to live trees when I get my own place. I like picking a time that we can all get together and go pick out the perfect tree. If that means going to a tree lot, the hardware store, or even better a tree farm. Another day that the whole family gets to bundle up and search for perfection.

6. Decorations!
Once we have the perfect tree it is time to decorate it. All the decorations are brought out of storage and Christmas music is put on to play. We argue of which lights to use, because we all have our favorites. Then the ornaments, some from all the way back when my grandparents first got married. Plus the yearly ornaments we always got when we were little with our names and the year on them. All kinds of memories in one big storage bin.

7. Charity!
Giving to others is what this time of year is about. Let’s be honest, we should give and help others all year but the “want” is stronger during this time. Giving to the food drives again. Putting money in the red buckets outside stores. Visiting nursing homes and hospitals, singing carols, taking gifts, snacks, and just spending time with the patients. All around making people happy.

8. A child’s happiness!
There are always children out there that will not get the Christmas they deserve, and it isn’t their fault. Thankfully we have programs to help these kids have the best possible Christmas, Angel trees to Toys for Tots. I always put a few toys in the Toys for Tots boxes. For me the most fun is when we adopt a child for Christmas. We get to shop for everything for them from socks/underwear to a new warm coat, to toys and a stocking of goodies. Knowing how happy this child will be when they wake up Christmas morning is such a wonderful feeling.

9. Music!
Music has always been a big part of my life, but Christmas music holds a special place in my heart. From the weekend after Thanksgiving until the day after Christmas, Christmas music plays in the car, at work, around the house when we are doing Christmas things. All songs from the hippo song to Carol of the Bells to Silent Night nothing is overlooked.

10. Movies!
As a child we always picked one night for Christmas movies. We would get big bags of popcorn to share and watch all the old cartoon Christmas movies. Rudolph, Frosty, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, The Year Without a Santa Claus…. We watched all the others throughout the season too. Holiday Inn; my all time favorite, was watched either on Christmas Eve or after dinner on Christmas Day.

11. Breakfast!
Christmas morning every year we all get up and have breakfast together. Breakfast usually consists of cinnamon rolls and juice. We gather around the table eat breakfast, and then mom goes and starts the turkey or the ham for dinner.

12. Presents!
I’m not going to lie presents are one of the best parts of Christmas. Who doesn’t like getting presents?? I also like giving presents. The choosing a perfect gift for someone, the wrapping it up beautifully, and seeing their face when they open it. Making people happy makes me happy. Plus I am always given one present a year that I get to be a little evil with when I wrap it. Some years I use boxes inside of boxes; sometimes I use lots of packing tape, sometimes a patchwork wrapping job, and sometimes all of the above.

13. New!
The New Year is so many things in just a click of a second on a clock. It is the wrapping up of the bad from the previous year. It is a beginning of something new. It is a time to look at your life decided what you want to let go, and where you want to go. One deep breathe in that one second of time can change so much.
Thank you for letting me share my traditions. Now go enjoy your traditions, your families, and your holiday celebrations whatever they may be.

Holiday Love,
Sara

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What is your favorite thing about the holiday season?

 

I’d like to welcome Victoria from Addlepates and Book Nerds to the blog today to tell us what Christmas is like where she lives in New Zealand! I love learning about Christmas in other countries, so this is a real treat for me!

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Hi everyone! I’m Victoria, a blogger from New Zealand. And over here, we celebrate Christmas a little differently!

First off, it’s summer here. That means we’re off school for summer break, and there’s absolutely no fear of a white Christmas. Honestly, I get super jealous of seeing snow in so many other countries! I would love snow here, but it’ll never happen at Christmas time. Luckily though, it also means we don’t have to snuggle up inside during the day. For me personally, my dad’s parents come and visit us, or we go and visit them. With six people in the house, it can be a little crowded. So it’s a good thing we get to go outside! We have Christmas lunch outside, and my dad and I often get sunburned. Yeah, we got the dud genes… Because my parents get Christmas break off, we go to the beach a lot once my grandparents are gone. Again, lots of sunburns, but also swimming in the sea! Oh, and the blooming of these beautiful trees, the pohutakwa.

When I signed up for writing this, I was worried that we didn’t have many differences apart from the season. Then I discovered something terrible about America – you don’t have Santa parades! Okay, how do you cope? What was your childhood?!? I haven’t been in years, since I’m supposedly too grown-up now, but when I was younger we went every year. I was even in one, dressed up as a fairy and handing out lollies (candy, sweets, whatever you want to call them). Basically, the parade is exactly what you’d expect – some dancers, some fairies, some circus people, all doing cool performances. And then, the man himself! Santa always has the best float, filled with lucky as heck children, always bringing up the rear of the parade. He’s not actually flying in this picture (obviously), but the floats are cool enough to make it look like it.

The last big difference (I think) is the food. For Americans, you’ve stuffed yourselves a month earlier at Thanksgiving. For us, the last time we ate that much food was last Christmas. So I think we get into it more than you guys do – but I’ve never celebrated anywhere outside of New Zealand, so what would I know? Definitely the best food we get at Christmas is pavlova. Honestly, I don’t know how to explain it to anyone who hasn’t had it. Google it! We also have roast kumara (sweet potato) with our roast lamb. Very New Zealandy! Oh, and you can’t forget Christmas cookies! Where would be without those? And advent calendars, Sampler biscuits, lamingtons… I’m drooling just thinking about it.

Thanks so much to Jana for letting me share all this with you! I’m so excited to see everyone else’s traditions.

Victoria is a 17-year-old blogger at Addlepates and Book Nerds. She swims, writes (not as often as she should…), reads, and watches too much YouTube to be healthy. You can find her on Twitter, Goodreads, Snapchat (@victoriajaynes), or email her at addlepatesandbooknerds@gmail.com! 

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What is Christmas like where you live?

 

 

I’m happy to welcome a very good friend, Alexia from Pretty Deadly Reviews, to the blog today to help us celebrate the magic of this holiday season! She’s here to tell us about her top five choices for holiday movie-watching.

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Elf

Elf is the movie that can get me into the Christmas spirit no matter what kind of day I’m having. It’s full of character, fun and hilarity. My family usually watches it on Christmas Eve after my brother gets home from his dad’s house. We also occasionally watch it on Thanksgiving night, though the former is much more likely.

Love Actually

I’ve got so much love for this movie. I mean, come on, it’s got an entire cast made from British actors and actresses. Plus it’s a movie about love, centered around the holidays. There’s always a mix of emotions when I watch this movie, but it always ends on a happy, hopeful note. There’s themes of love, death, cheating, promiscuity and forgiveness.

The Sound of Music

This movie was always one of my favorite movies to watch during Christmastime when I was little. Even now, as I am nearly 30, it still holds that same kind of magic for me. The chemistry between Julie Andrews & Christopher Plummer is perfection. The songs are forever etched into my memory, and it too creates a mix of emotions as I watch the movie.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas

Honestly, I can take either version of this. The short cartoon or the longer, live action version with Jim Carrey. They both are awesome for many reasons. The cartoon has the nostalgia vote, but the live action is longer and it actually adds more to the story in some ways.

The Preacher’s Wife

This is another movie that has been one of my favorites since I was little. A large chunk of it is due to the fact that I’ve been obsessed with Whitney Houston since I was a child. This movie has so much good stuff in it. I almost always end up full on sobbing at the end of it. There are a lot of “grown up” topics in it, topics I didn’t grasp as a child, but important topics nonetheless.

 

 

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What are some of your favorite movies to watch during the holiday season?

 

 

I’m so happy to have one of my very dear friends, Jessica from Literary, Etc., on the blog today to discuss her childhood Christmas traditions and how she misses them now that she’s an adult. Don’t we all have memories like these? I know I miss the magic of Christmas as a child. I still love it today, but there’s just something about being a kid at Christmas.

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Firstly, I want to thank Jana for the opportunity to write about Christmas! Secondly, I want to wish everyone happy holidays and I hope you all have a fun filled season!

I grew up with one set of “main” grandparents, my father’s parents. I can’t remember a holiday not spent at their house or with them. When I was a baby, I spent maybe a Christmas or two in Mexico with my mom’s family, but for the most part we hardly ever went to visit them unless someone died.

Spending Christmas with my grandparents involved the entire family. My aunts and uncles along with my cousins would descend on Grandma and Grandpa’s house on Christmas Eve. My Grandma always made the best tamales and to this day, no one’s tamales come close (not even my mother’s) and it was all hands on deck. Meaning as soon as we entered the house, hands were washed, and we were given a plate with a spoon and directed to help spread the masa onto the corn husks. I hated this task as a child and still do as an adult. I tended to work slowly so most of the work was done by others. It’s messy because the husks are usually wet from being washed and trying to spread the dough like mixture on them often meant it didn’t spread evenly. And then there was the waiting for the tamales to be done. It often meant as children we didn’t eat until Midnight.

My Grandma also made the most amazing cookies! The cookie recipe for the bizcocho (sort of like a snicker doodle but way more delicious) is highly coveted by those who taste them. In fact, they are my dad’s favorite cookies and my Grandma took pity on my mom and gave her the recipe. Not even her daughters have the recipe. Then she made cuernitos (horn shaped and what most know as Mexican wedding cookies) that were my personal favorites! I loved going over to her house and these wonderful cookies were waiting for me (and boo to sharing!). I never helped her bake and in fact, never really saw her bake these two cookies that were always present during Christmas.

I remember quite fondly one year all the kids were taken to a room because it was almost Midnight and Santa was coming. Of course my cousin Chris and I knew better, but for my sister it must have been fun hearing a knock on the door and my Uncle Javier pretending to be Santa. That was loads of fun. Even though as a kid, I often hated leaving my grandparents after 1 am and heading to bed close to 2 am, I would love to relive it even for one night.

While we had a tree and lights, I envy people who have stockings and get stocking stuffers. My mom loves stockings, but they are for decoration only! And yet, when I look back at my childhood, I wouldn’t change anything. One of my fondest memories of the holiday season was the first time we celebrated the Night of Three Kings, which is January 6th. It’s the day when the 3 Wise Men visit baby Jesus. On this particular night, my sister and I left a shoe out (not really sure why, but we were instructed to do so) and some fruit for the camels. We went to bed and the next day, the fruit was gone, there was some money in our shoes, but one of my mother’s plants had a leaf torn and it looked like something took a bite! I was old enough to question the reality of it, but the truth is, a piece of me still believes we were visited by the 3 Wise Men! And this reminds me of another event a few years later. We were in a new house in El Paso and it was Christmas Eve, but for some odd reason we were there and not with my grandparents. My sister and I went and put a plate of cookies and milk for Santa. My sister went to bed and I went to help my parents with the tamales. My dad got up to “eat” the cookies and came back and asked where they were. I showed him, but the cookies were gone as well as the milk. My mom swore up and down it wasn’t her. I had nothing to do with it and I’ve never questioned my sister if she ate them. Perhaps it was Old Saint Nick?

In hindsight, all of my extended family laughing and helping make tamales brings a tear to my eye because we don’t do that anymore. It’s been years since we’ve all been together to celebrate Christmas and I miss that. My immediate family stopped participating when we moved from El Paso to Fort Worth and then a few years later we wound up in Albuquerque. Over the years, my parents have gone to visit my grandparents after Christmas and it’s not the same. This year will mark the second Christmas without my grandmother (the first was shortly after her death) and I’m missing those days of innocence. I also wish my religious Aunt O, would have participated more. Her family never came over on holidays or birthdays. It saddens me that on the most important night in Christianity, she wasn’t there.

Over the years traditions change and new ones are added. It’s not uncommon that on the holiest night of the year, my family is watching a horror flick or two. I grew up opening my gifts at Midnight and still do. My parents may head to bed before Midnight and my sister and I might be the only ones awake (although last year, I struggled to stay up!), but at least that tradition stays the same. I’ve celebrated two Christmases without my family. The first was about 15 years ago when my parents and sister went to my grandparent’s house and I stayed because of work and school. I spent Christmas Eve with my then boss and her family and it was lovely, but I missed my family. Then a few years ago, I was studying abroad where I celebrated with a friend who stayed the night in my dorm room, but for the most part it was a lonely holiday.

As I grow older, Dorothy’s quote from The Wizard of Oz, “there’s no place like home” becomes truer each year. Holiday traditions are for the kids and to make memories, but as long as you’re with the people you love, it doesn’t matter if the tamales and cookies aren’t there. What matters is having the people you care about most in the world around you.

What were some of your favorite Holiday traditions growing up? Have you incorporated any new ones?

Ah, it’s that time of year again: when frost coats your windshield in the morning, the trees all get naked, kiddies get dressed up and demand candy from their neighbors… and writers everywhere go batshiz crazy trying to get in 1,666.7 words per day come hell, high water, or the Blue Screen of Death.

On November 1^st we’re all chipper and ready to go: Twitter is crowded with motivational quotes and READY-SETs. A few weeks later those who’ve met their goals are justifiably crowing– and the rest of us are, well, still determined, and cancelling dinner-dates catch up. By the end of the month there will be an amazing number of sick days taken, sleepless nights endured, meals skipped, wine bottles emptied, social engagements forgotten, keyboards broken, and (no doubt) carpal tunnel cases reported. I once made it to 42K in week three. I also drove to the grocery store in my fluffy pajamas and a pair of mortifyingly gross slippers. Thank god for friends who stop you at the automatic doors, or I would probably have wandered the aisles filling my cart with nothing but pistachios and Riesling and tried to pay with my driver’s license.

I admit it: I’ve never made it to 50K in a month–or, at least, not during November. I am determined to pull it off this time, and not just because I’ve got deadlines to meet. (Though I cannot deny, those are pretty motivating.) My evil plan to make this happen is to bury myself in such an elaborate map of my novel that I have no plausible excuse for a lack of forward momentum. It’s worked for me before. So for this year’s attempt, I’ve beefed up my usual level of crazy. There are plenty of great plotting methods out there, from the Snowflake to the Beat Sheet to the Tent Poles, and I’ve tried quite a few of them, with varying degrees of success (and failure). After all this experimenting I’ve come up with my own, which you can see below. Fair warning: it’s weird and numbers-oriented, kind of like me. If you don’t like numbers, or Excel, or weirdness, feel free to run away screaming and have yourself a mai tai now. J

Step 1: I write a back jacket blurb. This is basically a three paragraph hooky-bit that outlines your story in the most general way possible. I do this only because it helps me pin down the main conflict right away–not because I have any hope that I’ll be using it later on.

Step 2: I write an event sheet— a list of events that have to happen in the story. I do this in Excel. Each event gets no more than a few sentences of description. I list the projected number of scenes, the character each event will have for its focus, the point of view character(s) and each character participating. I also give each event a title, based on the Save The Cat beats of a film script. I find that as I write these out, they build pretty naturally on each other, and soon I have what looks like a fairly coherent plot: a thing which never fails to pleasantly surprise me.

Step 3: I assign each event two numbers: one for its relation to the story’s plot arc, and one for its relation to the story’s emotional arc. The plot arc gets numbers from 1-15, with 1 being basically two people having a relaxed convo over a cuppa, and 15 being crazy-intense-oh-hey-this-might-be-the-climax. The emotional arc gets numbers from -10 to 10, with -10 being the lowest point, the dark night of the soul, as it were, and 10 being ultimate triumph, a victory snatched from the jaws of defeat. Both the negatives and the positives are intense in different ways; the closer we get to 0, the less intense the scene is.

Have you run away yet? No? Oh good!

Because Step 4 is making line graphs of your events. This is, admittedly, a pretty subjective process –your assignment of numbers before you write a scene and after you write it may be completely different; your idea of a scene’s intensity may wind up being really different from what your readers think of it. But for me, charting the events helps me see the general shape of my story: it gives me a sort of a visual check that can suggest places where things will be too slow, or too piled-up.

I compare my charts to the classic story mountain diagram –not necessarily because I think all stories should look like this (I don’t), but because I find it’s a nice barometer for whether my story is “plotty” enough. I know that as a writer I tend to focus more on character development than on action, sometimes to the detriment of the plot. This helps me see where I might be doing that.

Lastly, I plug all of this into Scrivener with notes and maps and research and wordcount targets, and whee, it’s off to the races.

So… there you have it. This may be the kind of thing that only works for a handful of people, I don’t know– but for me, it’s detailed enough to keep my very disorganized mind on track, and it focuses on the things that I find important in a story. It reminds me, when I get lost (which happens much more often than I’d like), what I thought was important in my story.

Good luck, fellow NaNo-ers! May the odds, or at least the wordcounts, be ever in your favor.

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Amy Bai is the author of SWORD, a YA fantasy novel and the first of a series: she lives in Maine with her husband and two crazy-fluffy dogs. You can find her muttering about writing and books and other things on Tumblr, Twitter, and Facebook.

Are any of you participating in NaNo next month? Need a cheerleader? How are you preparing?