The Christmas Story Spirit

Do you like to read Christmas stories? New ones come out every year and those old ones start showing up too.

The first Christmas story showed up over 2,000 years ago when a baby was born in a Bethlehem stable. That beloved story has now been read and told millions of times. Fathers and mothers read it to their children. Preachers share it with their congregations. The Christmas story comes to mind every time you see a Nativity scene or hear a Christmas carol. We put angels or stars on the tops of our Christmas trees.

The love in that first Christmas story has inspired writers for centuries as they have written new Christmas stories. Readers have read and reread their favorite Christmas stories. Children and adults have acted out the that first Christmas story as well as many other plays written with the spirit of Christmas in mind. Perhaps we love Christmas stories so much because of how we want to embrace the true meaning and spirit of Christmas even as we scurry around doing all the busy things we feel we must do at Christmas time.

Last week, I shared a scene from the one Christmas book I’ve written, Christmas at Harmony Hill. I shared the excerpt because the e-book was on sale for a brief few days. The sale is over now, but the e-book is still reasonably priced at between $4.99 to $6.99 at most internet sites. But sharing that scene made me remember about writing the story over ten years ago. Of course, when you’re writing historical books, those stories stay as true to their moments in time ten years later or twenty years after the story is written. Just think about The Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. Readers still love the story these many years after it first made it into print.

All that said, I had never considered writing a story that would be considered a Christmas book. So when those years ago, my editor suggested I write a Shaker Christmas book, I had no idea if I would be able to do that or not. My agent told me to think about Hallmark movies. How those movies and especially the Christmas ones were sweet and gentle with a touching love story. Right there, I knew I might be in trouble since if you know anything about the Shakers, you know they didn’t abide romantic love among their members. Once again, as with my other Shaker stories, I had to find a way to slip my love story in the back door of  my Shaker village. I went a step farther with this story and slipped in a heroine who is with child.

My research into how the Shakers celebrated Christmas in the 1860’s opened up more story ideas. Every year shortly before Christmas, the Shakers observed a day of atonement they called Sacrifice Day. On this day, they were to leave behind any grudges, hard feelings and disaffection toward their brothers or sisters. They were to ask forgiveness from those they had wronged and from the Lord. Anything that was settled on Sacrifice Day could never again be brought forward against anyone in their family of believers. They were also to offer forgiveness fully and completely to those they felt had done harm against them.

I loved thinking about Sacrifice Day and what a truly wonderful way that had to be to rid their villages of problems among their members. Christmas is such a great time for families to forgive one another the slights and injuries that can happen even in the closest family relationships. The Shakers considered themselves a family of sisters and brothers who intended to live in peaceful harmony, but you know they got cross with one another now and again. All families have those moments. Anyway, the Sacrifice Day fit in with my story’s theme of forgiveness.

But I didn’t get deep into the story before I realized I’d forgotten my agent’s advice. I doubt readers would classify Christmas at Harmony Hill as sweet or gentle. Not with scenes of Civil War battles. However, I did hope readers would find the love story between Gideon and Heather touching. Also I hoped my heroine looking forward to the birth of her baby and thinking about how Mary might have had similar feelings awaiting the birth of Jesus puts Christmas into the story.

Still, Christmas at Harmony Hill is more historical novel than the usual Christmas novella. The story is set in December 1864 with the Civil War drawing to a close. Gideon continues on with the Union Army to the last major battle of the Civil War while Heather returns home to have their baby. When she finds no welcome at her father’s house, she seeks shelter in the Shaker village where her aunt Sophrena, the Shaker journalist in The Gifted, has lived for many years. Sister Sophrena is ready to help Heather even as she is beginning to doubt her own Shaker walk. And so Christmas comes to Harmony Hill.

Do you read Christmas stories? What do you like best about them? Do you only read them at Christmas time or will you read them any time of the year?

One reader told me she liked to read them in July, that it kept her cool. Another reader wrote the following in her review

This was a great story that could really be read any time of year. Ann takes you back in time to the Civil War era and gives you a look into that time from a soldier’s point of view and also takes you into the lives of the Shakers and their way of life. (Hope’s View)

Wishing you a very Merry Christmas and much joy in the coming year! 2026! Wow! Seems just the other day we were worrying about the turn of the century.