It's Christmas. Again.

by Janis Patterson

Remember when we were children and it seemed that geologic ages crept past between one Christmas and the next? Now it seems that the pine needles from one holiday season are barely swept away before another Christmas is barreling toward us.

This year I’m soft-pedaling the holiday. We have no small ones at home (save for the furbabies, who really don’t care) and all our family get-togethers are at other people’s houses this year. Yea! I don’t have to decorate. Or even dust.

It’s not that I don’t have the Christmas spirit – I’m just tired. A publishing blitz of ten books in four and a half months, four new books written, freelancing and regular blogs, plus the normal things like family, friends, the day to day things of laundry and cooking and the rest… it gets exhausting. Add on Christmas shopping and wrapping and parties and it gets even worse. Plus I’m getting older. (I will have to admit that I have reached the cereal years – every time I move it’s snap! crackle! pop!) Somehow putting up wreaths and crèches and garlands and animated lawn ornaments – though they are beautiful – doesn’t really excite me this year.

The Husband asked me what I wanted for Christmas and I didn’t have a clue. I mean, there are the things we can’t do anything about, like world peace and more sales (lots and lots, please!) of my books (Please, Santa – I would like to earn back at least the costs of publishing) and for Microsoft to quit making us change every few months to new programs that are both unnecessary and overly complicated. Then there are the things I really want but we can’t afford, like a new Herman Miller Aeron office chair (which costs about the same amount as my first car) or an office/workroom built above the garage. We already have everything we need, and a lot of things we want, so this year we have agreed that while there will be a few little trinket packages for Christmas morning, our main presents this year will be our trips. We are planning a lot of trips in the new year – the FRW cruise conference in February, perhaps a trip to Egypt in March, a sometime trip to Vegas we won, NINC in October and Denver in June…

Oh, have I told you about that? The Historical Novel Society is a prestigious international association which is holding its conference in the US this year – in Denver in June, to be exact. And…. (drum roll) I have been invited to appear on a panel on “Egyptology and Elizabeth Peters.” You all know what Egyptomanes The Husband and I are, and Barbara (Mertz, aka Barbara Michaels and Elizabeth Peters) was a friend. That invitation is truly a memorable gift.

While I love Christmas presents and parties and decorations, none of those are the true meaning of Christmas. There are those who can talk with much more eloquence than I about love, and faith, and grace, and all the other real things that Christmas means. Beside such cosmic truths poinsettias and reindeer and all the rest fade into insignificance.

So – this year I am going to try to be a better person, and keep the true meaning of Christmas in the forefront of my thoughts. I will be kinder and try to be a truly better person. I will try to treasure the things that really matter – family, friends, love, beauty and all the rest.

In one thing, however, I will remain the rebel – in gleeful defiance of the cleric Abu Musaab Wajdi Akkari (the one who said that wishing someone Merry Christmas is “worse than fornication, and drinking alcohol, and killing someone”) I will proclaim at the top of my voice “Merry Christmas to all!”

Animals Rights Day

by Kaye George

A lot of writers include animals in many of our our stories. A book without animals is kind of like a house without a pet—feels empty.

International Animal Rights Day was the 10th of this month, did you know that? There are many horrific stories I could tell, of course, to convince you that more work needs to be done for the poor creatures who have no words to express themselves, let along cell phones and access to social media. However, I don’t want to bring you a downer in this holiday season, so save those thoughts for January.

This is the season of Good Will to All. I’m sure Santa treats his reindeer well. How could they make it around the world like that if they weren’t in tip-top condition?

You can track the path of Santa and his deer here if you’d like to.

http://www.noradsanta.org/

When I was little, I worried that our dog, Skipper, who died while still a puppy, wouldn’t get to heaven. I also wanted there to be horses there, since my parents weren’t going to get me one while I was on earth, evidently. (Sure enough, they never did. It was plain that our back yard was plenty big enough for one little horse, but they couldn’t see that.)

Tommy, who lived across the alley and was Catholic (I was Methodist—still am), assured me that dogs and cats and horses would never be in Heaven. They would go, he said, to Limbo. I would also go there since I wasn’t Catholic. I made up my mind right then that I much rather be going to Limbo, not Heaven. It would be full of superior-sounding boys like Tommy.

I wonder if it’s a coincidence that Pope Francis chose this time to tell the little boy, “Paradise is open to all of God’s creatures.” It’s almost enough to make me want to go to Heaven, after all.

All animal photos from morguefiles

Photo of Pope Francis from Wikipedia