Hello friends! I’m so excited to welcome back author Anngela Schroeder to Austenesque Reviews todaay! I don’t know if you saw this, but Anngela will soon be releasing a Christmas novella titled Comfort and Joy! I know I’m not alone when I say that I adored An Unexpected Merry Gentleman and her scene-stealing original creations – Emily and Victoria Gardiner! I’m so happy to that we get to encounter these adorable and sweet munchkins again! 🙌🏼
Today Anngela is stopping by to share a post on holiday traditions! We hope you enjoy! 🎄
Happy Holidays, Austenesque Reviews! I am so excited to be here today to share my upcoming novella with you! “Comfort and Joy” is a Pride and Prejudice variation which finds our favorite characters stranded in a snow storm. But, the sparks can’t fly as much as we’d like because…Elizabeth’s little cousins, the Gardiners, are there with their friend Katie Joy Harris. Hilarity ensues when we experience this ‘adventure’ through the eyes of the children.
One aspect which carries through the story is traditions. So, we that in mind, I thought I would share a few of my family’s Holiday traditions with you. 🎄
~ Gingerbread Houses ~
When my nephew was two years old we thought it would be special to have him come over and decorate a gingerbread house. Little did we know that after we had our own children that tradition would morph into what it is today. By the end of the night, there are five structures with icing, candies and candy canes ready to be judged. The simplicity of the activity changed once all our boys began to stretch their imaginations: Santa became a sniper, Lego men were stuck in chimneys or dangling from the roofs, and Zombies were often found wandering the village.
~ Christmas Light Scavenger Hunt ~
After we finish our Gingerbread houses, we make hot cocoa and load into the minivan. I print off pages with random objects we could find in Christmas displays: The Grinch, ice-skating penguins, Santa in a vehicle. The hardest one we’ve searched for is a camel. We have learned nativity scenes often have lambs or cows, but rarely camels. We blare the Muppet Christmas album and sing at the top of our lungs, laughing all the way. This tradition is especially meaningful as my boys are now 11, 14, 15 and my nephew is 20 and they STILL want to go on our scavenger hunt and decorate Gingerbread houses. It’s magical! 😊
~ Christmas Cookie ~
Cookie making is such a fun tradition, and although my boys are more into eating the cookies and not decorating them, they still understand the importance of some of our recipes. The most significant one come from Sitti, my Arabic grandmother. My father emigrated from Palestine, first to Lebanon and then to the U.S. when he was twenty years old, a few years after my Sitti had come with my other uncles. If there is one thing beloved by so many cultures which illustrates family and tradition, it is recipes connecting us to the old country. Our ‘Sitti Cookies’ are a basic sugar cookie recipe, but there is anise added for an extra flavor. These treats are always cut out with star cookie cutters, because that’s how my Sitti did it. I like to dunk them in Hot Cocoa or eat them right out of the oven. That taste screams ‘childhood to me,’ and is something I hope my boys will cherish when they have families of their own.
What are some of your Holiday traditions? Do you bake certain recipes? Go to the same place to cut down your Christmas tree? Use the Menorah that your great-grandparents brought over from ‘the old country?’
Thank you so much for sharing, Anngela! I love your family traditions! And I love hearing how much they mean to your family! 🥰🎄 I cannot wait to see which traditions you spotlight in Comfort and Joy!
I wish you all the best with your upcoming release, Anngela!
~~~
~ GIVEAWAY TIME ~
Today Anngela is offering a chance for TWO lucky readers to win a Kindle Ebook of one of her previous releases (winner’s choice!) 🙌🏼
To enter this giveaway, please share one of your favorite holiday traditions or leave a comment, question, or some love for Anngela!
- This giveaway is open worldwide. Thank you, Anngela!
- This giveaway ends December 13th!
I like your to read your “stuff. (I’m feeling casual today.)
Thanks for the giveaway.
I’m feeling casual today as well, so thanks!
How have I missed so many wonderful books to read? I guess I wasn’t checking this website yet. Now I have some new nooks to add to my TBR list and for sure I’ll be starting one soon. I read “A Life Worth Choosing” and absolutely loved it! Looking forward readng more from Angela as I think she’s a gifted writter. Happy week to all and many blessings!
Thank you, Laura! I appreciate your kind words. I hope you enjoy my other books as much as you did “ Life Worth Choosing.” Happy holidays to you!
Thank you for your kind words, Laura. I hope you enjoy getting lost in the world of Darcy and Lizzy. Happy Holiday!
Really enjoyed “A Life Worth Choosing.” Excited to check out your other books!
Thank you Cassandra! I’m so glad you enjoyed A Life Worth Choosing. It was one of my favorites right!
Thank you, Cassandra. Have a wonderful holiday season and happy reading! 🙂
Such great traditions, I’m so glad your boys still love to participate! Do you know, I’ve never made a gingerbread house? I suppose they weren’t popular here in the U.K. I admit to loving all things ginger though, bread, cookie, stem. I also love the idea of anise in your star cookies . Happy baking!
When we were little in school we would make ‘graham cracker’ houses because they were easier to do with little fingers. Have a lovely day, Glynis. I hope you are feeling tip top! xoxo
Our Christmas tradition always included a tree set on a platform with a train and a village. I’m sorry to say that as we have aged and my sisters are now separated by many states, that tradition has gone by the wayside. Ah, the good old days of yesteryear!
We also had a tree on a table when I was younger. We didn’t have a train, though. However, with 3 sons we now do the tree and my youngest makes it his mission to make sure it gets put up every year!
Thanks for the chance to win these books. They sound wonderful, especially the upcoming release.
Thank you, Coleen. I hope they are as enjoyable as they sound. 🙂
I loved to read about your traditions. From my corner of the world gingerbread houses are not popular but we have the gingerbread man, I remember “stealing” some from our Christmas tree.
One of my son’s favorite stories when he was little was the gingerbread man! Thank you for the memory. 🙂
Family traditions are so important, and I’m not surprised that your boys and nephew continue to participate. It will be continued with their own children. My children always got an Advent Calendar, and I now continue that tradition by send them to my Grandchildren. Thank you for the giveaway.
We love our advent calendar. My mother and I made ours before she passed away and it is a treasured memory. The chocolate advent calendars don’t make it the whole month between my sons and husband. 🙂
We’re pretty mellow here with holiday traditions. My grandmother made Christmas cookies from a receipe she received from her father-in-law. It also was a basic sugar cutout cookie with anise, but it is from Poland. My aunt makes them now, and they always throw me back to warm memories of my childhood.
I wonder how many recipes from different countries all started the same and ‘traveled’ the trade routes of the world. Thank you for sharing, Robin. 🙂
We have a lot of traditions but my favorites are”Family Christmas” and Advent readings. We live several hours from our family so we travel for Christmas day every other year. We decided to have an early Christmas celebration at our own home so our children can enjoy gifts at home. We try to take the whole day to celebrate like we do on Dec 25th.
We also read an Advent Devotional each year with our children to help us focus on Jesus through the entire month.
Congratulations on your new book, Anngela! I very much enjoy your writing!
Thank you, Rebecca. I love the idea of the daily devotional. When our boys were little, and we had more family around they would recreate the journey to Bethlehem. It was a special time.
Looking forward to reading this novella! My favorite holiday tradition takes place on Christmas Eve. I turn out all the lights in the house except the white lights of the Christmas tree and listen to the Christmas portion of Handel’s Messiah.
Heather, you are speaking my language! There is something about Handel’s Messiah which reaches into my heart and grips me! We prayed for children for so many years and when they finally came (all boys) I could not get the line “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given…” out of my head. And now, I sing that to them every year on their birthday. 🙂
Our favorite holiday traditions usually involve opening up the glitter-lined box of (mostly little-kid made) decorations that is stored away all year long. You never saw so much shiny blue and silver! We look for every surface in the house to hang it on. Door knob? Hang it. Chandelier? Hang it. Corner of a wall mirror? Hang it! anything that sticks out in any direction but down? Hang it! And when the holiday is over, we to the ritual running of the vacuum to pick up all that “glittery goodness” on the floors of every single room in the house! And then we lovingly re-wrap in tissue paper all of the “delicate” ornaments and fold away all of the garlands, light strings, banners, and other decorations. (Menorahs and Dreidels go in a separate “no glitter allowed” box. (Not that it helps much… ;-))
Amyz, glitter, glitter everywhere! What fun! Thank you for sharing your tradition with us. I bet you continue to find glitter all the way up to the following year! 🙂
Thank you for a chance to win a book. I have read and enjoyed eight by this author already. Our tradition is mainly that we have dinner together Christmas Eve as the grandchildren want to be in their own homes on Christmas Day to enjoy their new toys.
Sheila, I so look forward to your comments and reviews of my books. 🙂 How thoughtful of you to have Christmas Eve dinner so your grandbabies can be in their own home Christmas Day. Holidays are tricky things and it sounds like you navigate them beautifully!
We go caroling to the elderly and shut-ins with our church family and read the Christmas story from God’s Word before opening our gifts.
I’d love to try a Polish sugar cookie recipe as I also share that heritage.
What a wonderful way to share the spirit of the holiday. I’m sure your voices and time are appreciated! maybe we should all do a recipe exchange. 🙂
Wonderful memories! I would love to read your Christmas book.
Thank you, tgruy. I hope you get a chance to, and enjoy it.
The girls sound adorable. Congrats on the release and thanks for the giveaway!
Thank you! They are such fund characters to write. 🙂
I loved “A life worth choosing”. I will definitely check out your books in Kindle. As a Christmas tradition, we like to go look at the decorations, maybe we’ll add the scavenger hunt to make it interesting.
Thank you for your kind words. I highly recommend the scavenger hunt. It keeps the boys entertained, and they LOVE to compare people’s houses from previous years and observe what’s been changed. 🙂
Wonderful traditions. When I was little we would always decorate the tree singing traditional Spanish carols and many ornaments were made by us. The tree was a young cypress tree so that smell means Christmas for me. We would also make the Nativity scene and add any and all animals we had: lions zebras, elephants, huge turtles, tiny ducks and elephants. I definitively have to rekindle this with my children.
I’d love to expand my reading with more of these books as I loved “A Life Worth Choosing”.
Happy week to all and many blessings!
Thank you, Laura. I’m sure this tradition would become one which your children remembered fondly, as you do.
I loved reading about your family traditions, Angela. It is so neat that your boys and nephew still love to go on the Christmas lights scavenger hunt and decorate the Gingerbread houses. There were certain things we always baked and Sugar cookies with all the decorations, icing and all, was one of them. We would also drive around and look at all the decorations. I still do some of the special baking things, but haven’t gotten to specifically drive around to look at lights in several years. Maybe I will have to do that this year. 🙂 Thank you for sharing your traditions with us. Your book sounds like lots of fun. I look forward to reading it. Best wishes on its release!
Thank you, so much, Janet. Enjoy your holiday and happy baking. 🙂
I enjoyed reading about your traditions. The scavenger hunt sounds like fun!
Thank you, Ginna. The scavenger hunt is a blast, and I highly recommend it! 🙂
Family traditions are so, so vital!! For our family, celebrating Advent has been extremely important. Every night after dinner, the family member whose turn it is to be the “leader” lights the requisite candles on the wreath in the center of the table, reads aloud a short Advent devotional, leads the praying of the Advent Collect from the Book of Common Prayer, snuffs the candles, and then we adjourn to the living room where a huge (3 ft by 5 ft) Advent calendar (designed and sewn by my sister-in-law) hangs on the wall with a cloth pocket for each day of Advent. The “leader” then pulls out the card for the day, reads aloud the Bible verse attached to the pocket, and then gets to distribute the treats in the pocket to the rest of the kids (usually small chocolates or small toys).
We also enjoy celebrating all Twelve Days of Christmas, including Twelfth Night with our Anglican Church with a burning of the greens and enjoying delicious trifle and sherry!! And we never take down the Christmas things until Epiphany (January 6), and then we open the “big family present” (one year it was an Xbox, another year an air hockey table, etc.) and enjoy a King’s Cake!! Whoever gets the one pound coin in their piece gets to be the King!! 😀
Merrily,
Susanne 🙂
Susanne, what lovely traditions! I feel like a part of your family! I am going to look up the recipe of a King’s cake. That sounds marvelous! happy holidays to you!
I have not read any of these books and would love to get to read them! I have just come home from visiting my eldest daughter. We managed to do som e Christmas-shopping and making som Christmas-cookies. Looking forward to Christmas when we all will be together!
I love that your older boys still want to do the traditions, and they still belt out the Muppet Christmas too!?! 🙂
I love that they still love the traditions as well. Yes, they still belt out the Muppets Christmas (with John Denver). Their favorite song is ‘Christmas is Coming,” because Miss Piggy keeps singing after everyone else stops. They have laughed since they were teeny boys. 🙂 Happy Holidays! 🙂
When I was a child, my parents got out the 8mm camera and took home movies of us all dressed up and opening our presents. I have some of those home movies somewhere and managed to digitize one of them. So now that I’ve admitted to being old enough that my parents used 8mm cameras to take home movies, I’ll say that my current “tradition” is to set up the small battery-powered circuit board shaped like a Christmas tree with LED lights that blink. Husband and I exchange presents at the much more civilized hour of midnight-ish instead of early morning.
Lois, I think midnight-ish is much more practical than early morning, as you can sleep in. 🙂 Happy Holidays! 🙂
Thanks for sharing! I love all the traditions of Christmas. My personal favorite is singing Silent Night by candle light at church Christmas Eve. My favorite family traditions would probably be decorating the tree (being somehow covered by glitter is a must) or decorating cookies.
Katherine, thank you for sharing your Christmas traditions. Decorating cookies seems to be a popular tradition, but even better than that is eating them! 🙂 Happy holidays! 🙂
The only things I do during the holidays at this time are look at the many Christmas lights, especially at the city park. Personally, I hope to start reading a Christmas related book every year (like Little Women). Are there books and/or movies that you like to read and/or view during the Christmas season? Thank you for answering that question in advance. Also happy congrats to another Christmas suitable book! Since I love It’s a Wonderful Life, I hope to get to A Life Worth Choosing to go along with it.
Hi, Jen, My favorite Christmas movie to watch every year is The Charlie Brown Christmas. I know it’s not a real movie, per say, but it is Christmas to me. I also love White Christmas, and not a Christmas movie but I watch it every year Sound of Music and Meet Me in St. Louis with Judy Garland.
Have a wonderful holiday!
The Goodness of Men is now added to my list to read, not sure how I messed that one before. i can’t wait to read the rest. A Life Worth Choosing sounds like a perfect read for this season. Thank you for all the time that you & so many of the other writers put in to share wonderful stories with us!
I am always ready to add a new JAFF author to my reading list! So much JAFF, so little time…
I love reading Christmas themed JAFF stories. Thank you for the opportunity to win one of your books.
I love to read Christmas themed JAFF stories. Thank you for the chance to win one of your books.
Congratulation son your new book. Such a lovely cover, children reminds us of the season. For tradition just the norm – go to Church either the 24th (we use to do the vigil but with the kids we go earlier now) or the 25th. Then meal with the family and friends. (Usually the friends we hardly see the whole year)
Thank you for sharing your traditions and the chace to win a copy
Thank you for sharing your stories, and for the chance to win a book.
I used to attend Christmas Eve vigil mass at 11pm in church as a family but I mostly go alone to church as my parents can’t attend mass due to old age. I would go to shopping malls to see Christmas displays and compare which malls have the best decorations and take photos as souvenirs. And I try to watch one Christmas movie during the holiday season.