Christmas is a time when you get homesick — even when you're home. ~Carol Nelson

As evident from this family photo of me and my three siblings, I was a big Christmas lover as a kid. ***Note. Hum Somewhere in My Memory from Home Alone as you read this.

From age three until not quite six, I lived in Taiwan with my parents and younger brother, John, where my mom and dad taught English at Tunghai University. Christmas gifts were hand-me-downs from other Missionary families, which John and I were ecstatic to receive. We knew no better than gently used toys, until our family returned to America and we discovered modern toy stores, television, and were bombarded with commercials. The stupendous merchandise wowed us, and we were ardent believers in everything Christmas.

My grandmother, called Mommom, prepared for the big day all year long and was a devotee of the holiday. She made Christmas a mystical blend of the Nativity and Santa Claus, which worked for me. The generous old guy in the red suit was equally devoted to Christmas and a great boon to a family with limited funds. However, I learned Santa could be touchy and kept a naughty list. I hoped he had absentmindedly omitted my name. Fortunately, I also learned the Christ Child forgave sins, and prayed Jesus gave Santa a heads-up on the forgiving Beth thing. A miracle transpired because I never got switches in my stocking as my ancestral Uncle Gus was said to have done. That horrifying tale struck fear into his descendants, and I was super good those last few days before Saint Nick's timely arrival.

Visiting Mommom and my aunt, uncle, and five cousins at the old Virginia homeplace for Christmas was like being part of a Hallmark movie. Nothing could match the wonder I experienced there as a child. My uncle even reported seeing reindeer hoof prints in the snow on the roof, and one year a jovial neighbor dressed up as Santa--I recognized him-- came to the house to delight us kids. I was concerned this facade might offend the REAL guy, and he'd stay away. But we heard the sleigh bells out in the meadow, as we did each Christmas Eve. The warning jingle sent us scrambling to bed before Santa's arrival, and inspired the title of my holiday romance, Somewhere the Bells Ring. The home in this ghostly time slip Christmas romance was also inspired by the homeplace pictured below. Built in 1816, Chapel Hill, as it's called, has been in the family for generations and is where I spent some magical holidays. 

(Virginia Family homeplace in the Shenandoah Valley)

With such fantastic childhood memories, Christmas as a bigger kid/adult was a bit of a letdown. Maybe it is for everyone. Christmas really belongs to children, but I still cherish it in my heart. As Scrooge says after hard lessons learned, "I will honor Christmas in my heart and try to keep it all the year." And so I do.

My mantle is perpetually decorated with angels and lights. Also a Dalek Supreme and the Tardis...a little random, I suppose. Still, it's festive year round. The holidays can be rather overwhelming. I try to keep our celebration simple but fun, especially for the small people in my life. I truly must love Christmas because I've written three romances with the holiday as a central theme and I'm pondering a fourth. Maybe with an angel in the story...I love angels. But not the weeping kind, thanks to the creepy ones in Doctor Who.

Don't blink.

(My mantle)

(I especially love angels.)

Several years ago, my mother found a number of vintage Christmas cards in an old trunk. This marvelous find took us on a trip down memory lane, back to people who lived before I was born. I'm terrible about remembering to send cards, but these are great. I may have shared some of them before, but here's another look at a few. 

(Vintage Santa and a Norman Rockwell print on cards among Mom's finds.)

Somewhere the Bells Ring (Somewhere in Time)

Blurb: 

December 1968: Caught with pot in her dorm room, Bailey Randolph is exiled to a relative's ancestral home in Virginia to straighten herself out. Banishment to Maple Hill is dismal, until a ghost appears requesting her help. Bailey is frightened but intrigued. Then her girlhood crush, Eric Burke, arrives and suddenly Maple Hill isn't so bad.

To Eric, wounded in Vietnam, his military career shattered, this homecoming feels no less like exile. But when he finds Bailey at Maple Hill, her fairy-like beauty gives him reason to hope--until she tells him about the ghost haunting the house. Then he wonders if her one experiment with pot has made her crazy.

As Bailey and Eric draw closer, he agrees to help her find a long-forgotten Christmas gift the ghost wants. But will the magic of Christmas be enough to make Eric believe--in Bailey and the ghost--before the Christmas bells ring?~

I really think Hallmark is waiting for me with this story.

From Romancing the Book: "Ms. Trissel captivates her reader from the moment you start reading the first page. She has written a compelling love story that spans some fifty plus years and keeps you entertained every step of the way with the story within a story...I fell in love with her characters and look forward to the next delightful story ready with Kleenex box in hand. A must read for every romance fan." ~Reviewed by Robin

Somewhere the Bells Ring is available in eBook from all online booksellers. Plus a smashing new audio version from Audible is out at Amazon. For the kindle and audio visit:  

https://www.amazon.com/Somewhere-Bells-Ring-Time-Book-ebook/dp/B006530S2Q

Follow my Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/Beth-Trissel/e/B002BLLAJ6/

(Tag from the earlier 20th century)

Vintage Christmas Cards & A Colonial American Christmas Romance

Ever wonder about the history of Christmas Cards in America? Here’s what I found.

From Something Olde: Christmas Card History

“In the late 1700’s merchants sent their customers best wishes for the new year. The cards were created on lithographs and hand-colored. A lithograph is an etching on a stone that can be reproduced on paper. Sending Christmas cards first became popular in England over 150 years ago.  In the 1840’s John Calcott Horsely was a curator at the royal museum.  He was late sending his usual holiday letters to his friends and relatives for Christmas.  He asked the artist, Sir Henry Cole, to design and hand-color 1,000 cards.  He wanted the card to show people being fed and clothed to remind his friends of the needs of the poor during this season.”

From The Old Farmer’s Almanac: 

Holiday Cards

The first American to print and sell Christmas cards was Louis Prang of Roxbury, Massachusetts, who began publishing cards in 1875.

(In 1953) President Dwight D. Eisenhower is given credit for sending the first “official” Christmas card from the White House. An art print also became the standard Christmas gift for the president’s staff, a practice continued to this day.

From Idea Finder: “A relatively recent phenomenon, the sending of commercially printed Christmas cards originated in London in 1843. Previously, people had exchanged handwritten holiday greetings. First in person. Then via post. By 1822, homemade Christmas cards had become the bane of the U.S. postal system. That year, the Superintendent of Mails in Washington, D.C., complained of the need to hire sixteen extra mailmen. Fearful of future bottlenecks, he petitioned Congress to limit the exchange of cards by post, concluding, “I don’t know what we’ll do if it keeps on.”

Not only did it keep on, but with the marketing of attractive commercial cards the postal burden worsened. The first Christmas card designed for sale was by London artist John Calcott Horsley. A respected illustrator of the day, Horsley was commissioned by Sir Henry Cole, a wealthy British businessman, who wanted a card he could proudly send to friends and professional acquaintances to wish them a “merry Christmas.”

From The History of Christmas Cards: At Christmastime, many people would send letters to friends and family far away, and children at boarding school would decorate paper and write letters to show off the writing skills they’d improved upon that term at school. However, the first official Christmas card was created in 1843 in Britain.

Sir Henry Cole, director of London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, would write letters to family and acquaintances at Christmastime. He and others could buy decorative paper on which to pen greetings and good wishes, but he found it to be a cumbersome task. So Cole commissioned an artist friend, John Calcott Horsley to create a card with a simple message that could be duplicated and sent to all his acquaintances. Horsley lithographed and hand-colored 1,000 copies of this first commercial card. It was a three-panel card – the center panel showed a family celebrating and the two wing panels depicted people feeding the hungry and clothing the naked. The card bore the simple greeting, “A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to You,” which would become the standard sentiment of the mass-produced Christmas cards.

CHRISTMAS CARDS RISE IN POPULARITY

“Christmas cards were quite elaborate and though the lithograph printing process helped in producing cards, they first became popular among the upper-class in England. However, the development and improvement of the postal system, making sending cards more affordable, was a big part of the rise in the popularity of Christmas cards. Early cards were not necessarily religious Christmas cards but favored images such as beautiful flowers, birds, scenery and other pretty things.

In 1875 Louis Prang brought the commercial Christmas card to the United States. Prang, a German lithographer, had developed a new innovative way of printing that made the process of creating Christmas and other cards much simpler and more affordable. Like British Christmas cards, Prang’s cards included various images that were simply pretty and tasteful, not truly having much to do with Christmas or even necessarily winter. However, some cards did include holly, snow and some other wintry or Christmas images. His cards became extremely popular in the U.S.; his company printed almost five million cards a year by 1881.”

Well, you get the idea. In my holiday release, A Warrior For Christmas, (also in audio) I journeyed farther back in early America to the colonial time period and the holiday celebration in a wealthy household. However, the hero, a former Shawnee captive, would rather return to his adopted people in the colonial frontier.

Blurb: Reclaimed by his wealthy uncle, former Shawnee captive Corwin Whitfield finds life with his adopted people at an end and reluctantly enters the social world of 1764. He plans to return to the colonial frontier at his first opportunity–until he meets Uncle Randolph’s ward, Dimity Scott.

Deaf since a childhood bout of Scarlet fever, Dimity Scott intends to be cherished for herself, not her guardian’s purse, even if it means risking spinsterhood. Then the rugged newcomer arrives, unlike any man she’s ever known. Dimity has learned to manage her silent world, but unaccustomed to the dangers of the frontier, can she expect love and marriage from Corwin, who longs to return to his Shawnee life?~

***A Warrior for Christmas is available from all major online booksellers including Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

“I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.”  ~Charles Dickens