Christmas Remembrances with Susanne Matthews

The Write Way Café welcomes Susanne Matthews, who shares memories of the magic of Christmas from days gone by.

Well, it’s December. For some, as the song says, “It’s the most wonderful time of the year,” while for others, it’s a time of sorrow and pain. This Christmas will be different from the others we’ve spent as a family. This past fall we lost not only two good friends, one who spent Christmas with us each year, but my father passed away. He lived a long, rich life, but that doesn’t make his passing any easier for us.

As I sit here, I reminisce about the Christmases of my youth, and dwell on the fond memories of days long gone. One of my memories focuses on my grandparent’s tree. My grandfather would go out to the bush and collect a pine tree, and then he would bring it home and spray paint it all white. To me, it was the most beautiful tree ever. If you look at the picture of my mother and I, taken in 1955, you’ll see the branches of the tree. Notice the tinsel? Each strand was lovingly placed by hand, and while the picture doesn’t show it, each light was shrouded in angel hair—raw fiberglass—to keep the heated bulbs from setting the tree on fire. How times have changed!

Other things I recall included the new pajamas to wear to bed on Christmas Eve, and the fact that bedtime came very late indeed since we attended Midnight Mass, and then went to my grandparent’s house for a Réveillon, the first of many feasts consumed over the holiday season. By the time we got to bed, it was well after two, and yet we were up before dawn and Santa had stopped by and filled our stockings with candies and treats, like an orange, an apple, a chocolate bar, and candy canes, as well as coloring pencils or crayons. Under the tree, there would be a new doll, a baby carriage, a storybook, a coloring book, a new snow shovel, and maybe a pair of skates. One year, I specifically recall an aluminum toboggan. My sister and I were the envy of every kid on the hill since our toboggan was so much lighter to carry back up the hill than their wooden ones.

When I decided to write His Christmas Family, I wanted to put into it some of the magic I remembered from that time—going tobogganing, taking a sleigh ride into the bush to pick out the perfect tree, making cookies, going to the Christmas fair—all the things that made the Christmases of my childhood special to me.

The other thing I remembered from that time was the way my mother and father put together baskets and delivered them just before Christmas. We weren’t rich, but Mom and Dad did what they could for those less fortunate than we were. That was the main inspiration for the book. Christmas isn’t about you or me. It’s about others; it’s about community. It’s about giving, not just receiving, and it’s about making memories. So while I will miss those who’ve gone, I take comfort in the memories that I have of wonderful Christmases past. Like Lee in the novel, I’ll never forget the ones who’ve gone, but I’ll rejoice in the ones still with me.

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Since losing his wife, children, and parents six years ago to a drunk driver, Lee Ostler stopped celebrating the holidays, especially Christmas. But he isn’t a modern day Scrooge by any means. Because his parents would’ve wanted it, he does his duty by his employees at Ostler Construction, the Payton Falls community, and his sister and her family, but that’s it.

When Sonia has to leave the country for a few weeks before Christmas, she begs him to watch the twins for her. Even if it means, parades, pageants, and fairs, how can he refuse? But things get complicated when the twins accidentally injure one of his employees, who turns out to be the shy girl he admired years ago in high school.

Life has dealt Laurie Wilson a lot of blows, but this year, the widowed mother of four has hit rock bottom. How will she give her children a magical Christmas when the cupboard’s bare, her wallet’s empty, she can’t work, and may well lose the roof over their heads? She needs a miracle, and if he happens to be her boss and the former high school quarterback she was too terrified to even speak to back then, how can she say no?

Can Christmas magic bring two broken souls together?

His Christmas Family is available exclusively from all Amazon dealers and is free to read in Kindle Unlimited.

About Susanne:

Amazon bestselling author Susanne Matthews was born and raised in Cornwall, Ontario, Canada. She is of French-Canadian descent. She’s always been an avid reader of all types of books, but with a penchant for happily ever after romances. A retired educator, Susanne spends her time writing and creating adventures for her readers. She loves the ins and outs of romance, and the complex journey it takes to get from the first word to the last period of a novel. As she writes, her characters take on a life of their own, and she shares their fears and agonies on the road to self-discovery and love.

While most of her books are romantic suspense, Susanne writes stories that range from contemporary to supernatural and everything in between. She is a PAN member of the Romance Writers of America.

When she isn’t writing, she’s reading, or traveling to interesting places she can use as settings in her future books or as interesting entries for her blog, Living the Dream.

Follow Susanne on her:  Website     Facebook page    Twitter @jandsmatt
Amazon author page  and Goodreads author page