A Letter from Danielle for December ’24
Hi Everyone,
I hope that the Thanksgiving holiday was a warm and peaceful one for you, and if you couldn’t spend it with family, you were able to spend it with friends. I like the focus on being thankful and gratitude; it’s a great reminder that even if everything isn’t perfect in our lives at the time, there is always something to be thankful for, however small. And connecting with people, whether new friends or old ones, is important. Even if the holiday felt blah to you, which can happen on some years, your presence may have been really important to someone else. Not to mention the stuffing (my favorite part of the meal) the turkey, cranberry sauce, toasted marshmallows on the sweet potatoes, and a multitude of pies to tempt you!!!
Thanksgiving is the prelude to my favorite month of the year!!! December. I have a childlike love of Christmas, it’s a magical time of year. It can also be a challenging time, if you’re far from family, or having a bumpy family time, or if you have hard memories of the season. My family and I have had our hard Christmases too, when we had lost my son Nick three months before. But, on the whole, I am thrilled by the joy and happy moments, the traditions, gathering with friends, and seeing Christmas through my children’s eyes when they were little. We have four big Christmas trees in the house, and a small one in each person’s bedroom who wants one. A wreath of white flowers on the front door, the yummy smell of pine trees (I pick the trees out every year on the day after Thanksgiving). We bake brownies for our friends. And we bring out our traditional decorations every year. A six-foot nutcracker at the front door, with a life-sized toy reindeer. Jolly Santas throughout the house. My married kids alternate Christmas with their in laws every year, so some years the house is bursting at the seams, and some years we are a very small group. I like the big years better, when the whole family is home.
When the kids were younger, we gave a skating party every year for our friends and their children. We dress up on Christmas Eve, go to church, and have an elegant dinner all dressed up. And we open our presents on Christmas morning in our pajamas, and crowd into the kitchen to make breakfast afterwards. It is truly a holiday I love.
And a dear friend gives us an incredible gift, and sets up a miniature village all lit up, with skaters, and skiers and a Ferris wheel, it is an extraordinary, beautiful creation. And we have a visit from Santa every year on Christmas Eve. He drops by at the end of dinner, to make sure we’re behaving, and checking on our Christmas wishes for a last time.
I hope you’ll have time to read my new books coming out over the holidays—and give them as gifts. Trial by Fire came out a few days before Thanksgiving, inspired by the raging fires in California a few years ago, in the Napa and Sonoma valleys, and the dramas around them. Upside Down is coming out in paperback on Christmas Eve, about relationships with big age differences, a sixty-year-old movie star mother involved with a younger man, and her plastic surgeon daughter involved with a much older man—and the dramas that causes!!! And when life slows down again after the holidays, Never Say Never is coming out in hardcover, at the beginning of January, about two unlikely people who meet and are stuck in France during the Covid confinement, and the unusual relationship that results. So, if you can make the time, I have plenty of new books to keep you busy and cozy, curled up with a good read.
Whatever your traditions or beliefs, religious or not, I wish you wonderful joy-filled holidays this year, and memories you will cherish.
Happy Holidays!!!
Love,
Danielle