It’s December 1. For 11 months of the year, with an exception here and there, I mostly read biographies, and books about history. I love history. Not only do I love knowing what went on before me, I really love discovering why. Over the next five years, my goal is to read a biography of every U.S. president - in order. This may take some doing, since for the last eight months, I’ve been stuck in a very good joint biography of George Washington and Benedict Arnold, that laboriously details every battle they were ever in. Now I ask you - unless each man left very extensive journals (and they could have, but that extensive, I doubt it), how does this dude know these details that have strung this book reading out to the current eight months and counting?
Still….it’s December 1, and that’s when my reading habits change, fed by all the smushy Christmas movies on Hallmark, ABC Family, and FaLaLaLa Lifetime. Yes, what you’re suspecting is true. In December I gorge on Christmas romance novels. There. I’ve said it, and I’m only partially ashamed. Oh, I read the traditional Christmas books - “A Christmas Carol,” Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, “The Gift of the Magi,” ”Why the Chimes Rang.” “The Grinch,” “The Cricket on the Hearth”, and so on and so forth, but I’m a complete sucker for the kind of book where true love and Christmas conquer even the coldest or most broken of hearts.
Give me a broken hearted woman, nursing a long ago love gone wrong, the new man in town who has no intention of ever getting caught up in any relationship that lasts longer than the time it takes to put his boots on, hop in the truck and leave, and the inevitable Yuletide circumstances that will throw them together as true soul mates, and I’m happy as a pig in slop. I don’t care if it’s a Christmas novel by Debbie McComber, or the short story I pulled out of a woman’s magazine 30 years ago about a college student named Mary, a cab driver named Joseph, and a Christmas blizzard, as long as it’s Christmas and true love reigns, I’m good. I’m more than good I go to sleep smiling, dream sweet dreams, and wake up happy, and full of hope. Got a suggestion to add to my pile and make my heart grow warmer and my smile bigger? Let me know.
It’s December first and officially the season of magic. I believe in the North Pole, the Elves, Santa Claus and most especially, for 25 days each year, I believe in true love.
