White Christmas

Did any of you share our record-setting pre-Christmas snowstorm? Any significant amount of snow before January is rare here. Last Saturday we got about two feet, and the roads were so inadequately cleared the next day that our Sunday services were canceled, which has never happened at that church before. Interesting how the conventional images from "White Christmas" and Currier-and-Ives art override reality in the popular mind. We visualize Christmas with snow even in areas like this one (mid-East-Coast) where it seldom appears on schedule for the holidays. My late stepmother, who grew up in the tidewater region of North Carolina and lived all her adult life in Norfolk, Virginia, both with a very slim chance of snow on Christmas, nevertheless held a fanatical devotion to the whole "White Christmas" ideal. Well, this year we had one, with plenty of inches still left over on Christmas from the snowfall almost a week earlier. I'm reminded of a story by Connie Willis—not in the MIRACLE collection I mentioned last week—from ASIMOV'S, called "Just Like the Ones We Used to Know.” The collective unconscious, primed by constant hearing of that song, causes snow to blanket the entire country, including Florida and Los Angeles. You can read the story here:

Asimov's

Has anyone here produced some holiday fiction? I've had only one actual Christmas story published. It's in the Jewels of the Quill anthology CHRISTMAS WISHES:

Christmas Wishes

Called "Little Cat Feet," it's based on the legend that animals can talk on Christmas Eve. A teenage runaway on Christmas Eve meets a stray cat who helps her out of a desperate situation.

However, I do have a vampire novel that takes place during the Christmas season, CHILD OF TWILIGHT, sequel to DARK CHANGELING:

Child of Twilight

The cover shows my twelve-year-old, human-vampire hybrid girl—also a runaway—feeding on a rabbit in the snow. I'm rather fond of it.

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt