It’s almost here! We are on the threshold of the annual celebration of Jesus’ birth! As I think someone has said (and sung) before, it’s the most wonderful time of the year.
And, though I know you still have things to wrap and things to bake and things to bedazzle, you must be reading these lines for some strange reason, right? So I want to wish everyone out there in Writerworld (which is slightly less dangerous than Westworld) a very merry Christmas. And, as I do so, let me also suggest a few very writerly ways to celebrate the nativity of our Lord these next few days (or weeks, if you’re of an Orthodox persuasion):
Read a favorite Christmas story.
Obviously, a couple of great places to start are the biblical accounts found in Matthew 1–2 and Luke 1–2. Also Dickens’s A Christmas Carol (which, if you’ve never read it—or if it’s been a while—you may find it to be surprisingly short).
Discover a new Christmas read.
Have you read John Grisham’s Skipping Christmas? Or if you’re a Sherlock Holmes fan like me, have you discovered the Holmes for the Holidays collection? Or How Christmas Can Change Your Life by Josh Moody? Or Liz Shoaf’s romantic suspense Holiday Mountain Conspiracy? Or the Christmas novella collection Love’s Pure Light by Deborah Raney, Susanne Dietze, Shannon McNear, and Janine Rosche? (Full disclosure: These last three books are by clients of The Steve Laube Agency.)
Recite something Christmasy.
Remember Clement Moore’s poem “’Twas the Night Before Christmas”? Why not recite it, either for yourself or for others—perhaps even around the Christmas dinner. Or try Robert Louis Stevenson’s “A Christmas Prayer.” One of my treasured Christmas Eve traditions involves a beautiful, sensitive, moving prayer written by a young Italian seminarian named Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli in 1902. He later became Pope John XXIII, and I read it aloud and post it on my daily prayer blog (oneprayeraday.com) every Christmas Eve.
Write something Christmasy.
Have you ever written your own Christmas story? Or poem? Carol? Prayer? Try it. Continue or begin a new tradition of writing something as part of your Christmas celebration.
These are only a few simple ideas for making Christmas a little more writerly … or making your writing and reading a little more Christmasy. As creative as the readers of this blog are, however, I bet some will share in the comments about their own “Christmas for Writers” ideas. Right?
