Gay Love and Other Christmas Magic (#newrelease #gayteens #gayromance)

by Cameron D. James (and his YA pen name Dylan James)

Gay Love and Other Christmas Magic

Dylan James

Can Christmas magic reunite two sets of young lovers before the night is over?

It’s been six months since Benjamin finally came out and publicly declared his love for his long-time best friend Jordan. And in those six months, so much has changed. They’ve both moved out, living in the university dorms, and they’re both overloaded with homework.

Although heading home on separate flights for the holiday, they still plan to spend this Christmas—their first as a couple—together, making up for the months of limited boyfriend time. But, when the snowstorm of the century hits New York City, Benjamin is stranded at the airport, with Jordan trapped at school. Unable to get in contact with each other, this very special first Christmas seems destined to be the worst one ever.

While Jordan is devastated, believing Benjamin to have already left the state, Benjamin is determined to get back to the dorms and into the arms of his boyfriend. The perilous trek through New York City is beset with obstacles all along the way, and he worries he’ll never make it back to Jordan. Yet, a little Christmas magic, and help from a few strangers, teach Benjamin not only is the impossible within reach, but that his relationship with Jordan is the best Christmas present of all.

This very special holiday follow-up to the bestselling Gay Love and Other Fairy Tales is a heartwarming journey that uncovers the true meaning of Christmas.

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The World is Falling Down, Hold My Hand. A post by @GiselleRenarde

My best friend wrote to me the other day. She asked, "What's your favourite Christmas food?"

She was eavesdropping on some people who were discussing the topic, both of whom agreed their favourite Christmas food was... mashed potatoes.

My friend thought this was very odd. She eats mashed potatoes all the time and doesn't consider it a festive food in the least.

I consider stuffing to be the Christmassy-est food. Out of curiosity... what would YOU consider to be the most festive food for this time of year?

My friend told me about this very specific square her aunt used to make for their dessert tray. It doesn't have a name, as far as she knows. But she hasn't had one of those squares in years, because her family hasn't had a big Christmas gathering in ages.

Her grandmother died this year, too.  Hers was even older than mine, well into her nineties. So I guess this will be the first Christmas without a matriarch for both our families.

It's funny how you start feeling close to the top of the food chain, when the older generations die off. Except, in this food chain, death is at the top of the food pyramid. It'll get you, in the end.  Every time.

I wish my friend lived closer to me, or I lived closer to her. She was telling me she's feeling very festive. She's not usually a Christmas person, but this year she feels like making a gingerbread house and baking cookies.  And December's only just begun!

But I guess I can relate to the need for festiveness, considering I just started reading an honest-to-god Christian Romance because it's got "Christmas" in the title.  Listen, I am not a romance reader. I am not a Christian. That's how desperate I am for... for...

For what?

Last night, I watched about 5 minutes of a British TV show about people who celebrate Christmas all year long. I'm pretty sure it was supposed to be funny.  To me, it was more "yikes" than amusing, because all these Christmas people struck me as the saddest of sad clowns. "Following his divorce, this man started celebrating Christmas every day of the year..."

What is it we're yearning for when we get in the holiday spirit?

Peace? Kindness? Compassion? Generosity?

Family?

On my mother's side, we've always celebrated Christmas a week ahead of time.  We'd do Christmas Day individually, in our own homes, but for my grandmother, that big family gathering was her real Christmas.  My grandfather was an atheist, but he was raised Jehovah's Witness, so he didn't celebrate at all. I don't know what the two of them did on Christmas Day. Pretty sure it was just another day, for them.

That's why I was so surprised when some of my aunts and uncles suggested that we NOT continue our traditional family party. I understand where they're coming from, because they stated it outright:

It'll be too difficult. It'll be too sad.

But that party was my grandmother's favourite day of the year.  She loved her family, and there were very few occasions when she got to see us all (or, at least, the vast majority of us). We'd do something for Mother's Day, have a party on her birthday, but Christmas was the big celebration.

The party is going ahead, but a few of my aunts and uncles have dropped out. I don't hold that against them. As I've mentioned many times before, we don't show emotions in my family. Instead of running to each other for support, we run to our corners to be sad in secret.

If we don't hold the party this year, a year that saw the deaths of my grandmother and my cousin, we never will again. I watched my father's family fall apart. My friend has seen the same with hers. I have so little left in my life--people, especially. I can't lose my family. They mean too much to me.

How do you know what's right?

by Giselle Renarde

Christmas with my family wasn’t easy this year.

The week before Christmas, I was trying to get in touch with my mother. She’s got 3 phone numbers (work, home and cell) and she wasn’t answering any of them. When I couldn’t get my mom on the phone, I hovered between worried and irritated. It’s pretty common for my mom not to answer my calls because she’s “too busy” but that’s not what was happening this time.

When I finally got hold of her, she sounded awful. I could barely understand what she was saying. It sounded like her whole body was shaking.

She hadn’t answered my calls because she was too sick to get to the phone, too sick to even move. She’d been vomiting for five days.

I had no idea she was sick. Nobody did, except for my brother who’d been taking care of her. My mom has a very strong constitution. She never gets sick. But if you’d heard her voice on the phone, my god, you’d have been as worried as I was.

But here’s the thing about my mother: she doesn’t like doctors. I mean, I don’t either. I get that from her and she gets it from her father. But last year when I was having heart palpitations and chest pains and all sorts of messed up shit, I let my sister take me to the emergency room.

My mother clearly needed health care, immediately and urgently, but she insisted she was “fine” and she’d recover if we just let her lie on the couch long enough.

I called my sister, the one who lives right down the street from my mom, and asked her, “Did you know that mom’s really sick?” Nope. Of course she didn’t. My mom was hiding from us because she knew what we’d say and she didn’t want to hear it.

My sister brought my mother vitamin water and other supplies. At that point my mother couldn’t keep anything down, not even tea.

Christmas Eve, my siblings all assembled at my mother’s house. At that point, my mom had not eaten anything in a week. She was sick as fuck and we were legitimately concerned she was going to die.

My mother refused to participate in the healthcare system.

We called my aunt and uncle. They offered to come over and carry my mom into their car and drive her to the emergency room.

We gave my mom three options: my aunt and uncle could take her to the hospital, we could take her to the hospital, or we were going to call 911.

She freaked the fuck out. Well, as much as she could considering she was unable to even sit up.

Oh, did I mention that all this was happening concurrent with an E. coli outbreak in my region? Yeah, and my mother’s symptoms matched up pretty precisely. One of my sisters happens to be a scientist working on her PhD in disease epidemics, and she was the one who brought the E. coli outbreak to my attention. The fact that she was concerned, and that I know this is something people die from even when they’re in hospital, had me so worried I actually expressed emotions around my family. And I never do that.

I spent Christmas Eve screaming at my mother.

I said, “People care about you! People want to help! We’re not going to let you die just because you’re too stubborn to go to the hospital!”

That’s all it was. Stubbornness.

And fear.

I kept asking, “What are you so afraid of?” and that’s a question she wouldn’t answer. Because I’m pretty sure the answer in her mind was: if I go to the hospital, I’m going to die. That’s what people in hospitals do.

My mother adamantly and belligerently refused medical care. She wouldn’t allow us or my aunt and uncle to take her to the emergency room. Clearly, she needed IV fluids. We needed to know what was wrong with her. But she begged us not to call 911. Begged us. “Just let me stay here on the couch. Please, I don’t want to go to the hospital!”

Ultimately, I guess she won, because we didn’t call 911. We said we were going to… but we didn’t.

I told my mother she’s her father’s daughter, and she accepted that title gladly. My grandfather didn’t like doctors either. He had shrapnel embedded in his lungs from WWII, and toward the end he had tremendous trouble breathing, but he wouldn’t accept medical care or oxygen in-home. He’d signed documents, power of attorney type things, I don’t know, saying that he refused to be admitted to hospital if he was incapacitated. DNR type stuff. He was serious.

But when he had a stroke, my grandmother called 911. Exactly what he didn’t want, but he was incapacitated at the time. In order to admit him to hospital, she had to lie to medical professionals. She told them he had said to her that he changed his mind, that he wanted hospital care. That’s the exact opposite of what he wanted. My grandmother tells me she did it for herself. She wasn’t ready to lose him yet, and she didn’t want him to die in the house.

He died in hospital about a week later.

I don’t know what’s right in this situation. I don’t know what is the right thing to do.

When you’re dealing with a child, you can impose your will on them. You can take your child to the hospital when they’re sick. But when we’re talking about another adult? When it’s your parent? When they clearly require immediate medical attention and they refuse it? What is the right thing to do? Impose my will on my mother? Call 911 even when she’s told us not to?

Acting in someone else’s best interest is a complicated thing. Older doesn’t necessarily mean wiser, but I was also taught to respect my elders.

My mother hasn’t fully recovered from whatever mystery illness is in her body. She’s eating again. My brother is caring for her. But when my girlfriend saw the state of my mom yesterday, the first thing she said when we left was, “Your mother needs to be in a hospital.”

You try telling her that.

Who is a gift for?

by Giselle Renarde

My grandmother came to Canada in the 1930s. Her family was beyond poor, often relying on a downtown soup kitchen for meals. I remember her telling me that if it hadn't been for a box of gifts distributed by the local newspaper to children living in poverty, she and her siblings wouldn't have received anything for Christmas.

Fast-forward to the 1980s, when my cousins and siblings and I were coming up. My grandparents were working class people living on a budget, but you would not believe how many gifts my grandma gave us at Christmas. Little things, but tons of little things. Cheap plastic toys and clothing from the clearance rack at her local discount store. We're not talking one or two items (or three or four)--we're talking garbage bags full of stuff.

I don't remember how I felt about the sheer quantity of gifts I received from my grandmother. When I was a kid things like storage space were not a concern. But the reason she gave us so much is clear to me now: she was compensating for the poverty of her own childhood by spoiling her grandchildren.

Fast-forward again to the present day. My grandmother died in the 1990s, but her memory lives on--most notably because my mom and my sisters refer to my girlfriend as "Grandma R" behind her back. It's something they snicker about. They snicker, I groan. It's easy enough to laugh when you're not the one whose girlfriend gives you gifts you don't want.

I live in a 1-bedroom apartment. I'm not a fan of "stuff." And yet from our very first Christmas as a couple, my girlfriend has been giving me an abundance of junk for Christmas. And when I say "junk" I'm talking about bags of random shit from the dollar store.

The thing is, my girlfriend LOVES Christmas. She is a Christmas fanatic. I won't even go to her house between November 1st and the end of January because it's so overly decorated (Christmas stuff EVERYWHERE--including on the floor) that I can't breathe. It's overwhelming.

Just like the gifts. The gifts are overwhelming. It's too much cheap crap, too much stuff I have no use for. And I'm too environmentally-minded to throw it in the garbage, which means it's now my job to figure out which charitable organization accepts donations of stupid crap.

Last week we were talking about gratitude here at The Grip. This is the opposite of that. And I'm sure I sound like a snotty ungrateful child, but this is my eighth year trying to communicate to the most important person in my life that I really would prefer it if she didn't buy me presents. I'll tell you right now, this conversation never goes well. I try to communicate that I would prefer we did experiential gifts, like a special meal or a getaway. DO something instead of giving things.

Every time I broach this subject, a hissy fit ensues. "Fine! If that's what you want, fine!" And then she inserts passive-aggressive little jabs into conversations again and again. She wants to give me gifts. She derives joy from the act of shopping for me and giving those things to me and watching me open presents.

But what if I don't want them?

A more gracious person would accept them and smile and say, "Thank you! How did you know? It's just what I've always wanted." But I don't believe in lying to an intimate partner.

Last year my girlfriend handed me my gifts and said, "Here's more crap you're just going to throw in the garbage."

So why give it to me?

Who is a gift for? If I've said please please please do not buy me anything and you do the opposite, who benefits? Not me, that's for damn sure. If my girlfriend enjoys buying me gifts so much that she will go against my wishes year after year to give them to me, isn't she doing that for HER, not for ME?

Is a gift for the receiver, or is a gift for the giver?

All I know is Christmas was a hell of a lot easier when I was a kid.

My Creation

by Kristina Wright

I write a lot about my children. They are three and one and my life has been pretty much consumed by them the past few years. That's the way it is, when you have little kids. But yeah, I write a lot about these babies of mine. I think there are people who are sick to death of reading about my babies and seeing pictures of them on Facebook. I have this year-long project, you see, to take a picture every day of the two of them together. It started as a lark, to counter the repeated comment that you never take as many pictures of the second baby as you do of the first. This year, I can say I took just as many pictures of both of them. Maybe a few more of the second baby, actually.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, I write a lot about my children. For one, I didn't get around to having them until I was in my forties and that's kind of an anomaly (or so I've been told-- it seems to be more common in big cities). Not only did I have one baby, I had two. That also seems to be unusual-- most women in their forties have just the one kid. Unless they're taking fertility drugs, and then sometimes they end up with twins. Over forty = one pregnancy, regardless of number of offspring. So I've been told.

So what's my obsession with writing about my kids? Well, first off, I wasn't aware it was an obsession until a total (anonymous) stranger commented a couple of weeks ago about how I seemed to be dragging my feet on an anthology and while I had the excuse of toddlers, deadlines and health issues, I really need to get my act together and meet my professional obligations. (Okay, I'm paraphrasing, but that's how it read to me.) And my first thought was, "What the hell do you know about my day-to-day life?" And, of course, my own response was, "Quite a lot, actually. You write about your personal life, after all."

And so I do. I write a lot about my kids, in part, because I truly never expected to have any. To be honest, I didn't want kids from a very young age until maybe around age thirty. Even then, I was always rather ambivalent about it. Another thing I've written about, maybe not as much as my kids, is the fact that I've been married practically forever. Twenty-two years in October. I don't write quite as much about my husband and our marriage as I do about my children, maybe because he's been a part of my life for, well, literally half my life, while the kids are kind of the new, shiny toys in my life. But I have written quite a bit about my naval officer husband, our crazy whirlwind courtship, his numerous deployments, our military moves and our life in general-- it's a good life, there's a lot of good stuff to write about.

So there's my family. My two little boys, my amazing husband and... yeah, that's it. You see, I've written, here at least, about my childhood. It was, in a word, dysfunctional. I've written about my difficult relationship with my mother and the decade long estrangement before her death. I've written a little about mybfather (who is actually my stepfather, though he did legally adopt me), with whom I have no relationship, and I've written some about my birth father, whom I've never met and whose name I didn't know until five years ago. I can't remember if I've written much about my only sibling (only sibling I know of, at least), my brother, with whom I have had no relationship in over two decades-- and I'm fine with that. I have no grandparents to write about. My maternal grandfather died before I was born, my maternal grandmother died when I was two. I was never close to my father's (stepfather's) parents, his father died when I was around twelve, his mother never much took to me since I wasn't really her biological granddaughter and she and my mother hated each other. I don't even know if she's still alive.

All of my mother's family lives/lived in Missouri. It was a large family-- twelve children-- but with the exception of a couple of cousins I used to write to when I was a kid and maybe still exchange Christmas cards with if I have time, I have no relationship with them. My father's (stepfather's) family lived close to us in Florida and I did see my three cousins several times a year, but we were never particularly close either. Two of them, the boys, have died in the past few years and I found out long after the fact. There is only my one girl cousin and her family left-- and we rarely keep in touch, either. If not for Facebook, I'd probably know nothing at all about them.

That's my family. All of it. I spent my childhood immersed in books and dreaming about being sent away to boarding school and I have spent most of my adult life trying to make a family out of my friends. You know what I mean. "Friends are the family you choose" and all of that. And I do have a few very close, very precious friends. Are they family? In all the ways that matter, yes. To me, they are more my family than the brother I was raised with. But to them-- well, I think to most of my close friends, I'm a bit of a sorry case. Not quite an orphan, but certainly lacking the one thing that most of them seem to have: a big, happy, supportive, close family. (And if not all of them have all of those qualities, they certainly have three out of four.) So when the holidays role around, they are with their families, where they belong. And I am always a bit wistful and melancholy that I didn't grow up with the kind of family so many of my friends have. 

My husband was deployed for our first baby's first Christmas-- and I was alone with a newborn for nearly five months. I did it all, and I did it alone for the first eight weeks. Then I hired a friend I had known for several years to be my part-time babysitter and I had a little help. But baby and me, we spent Christmas 2009 alone, just the two of us. He was exactly three weeks old, so he wasn't much company. It was okay-- I wasn't much company either. But we were together, me and the only family I had in the state. And that was okay. It was good. I had family. Yes, I could've gone somewhere, accepted an invitation to some friend's house to join their family celebration. But I was three weeks postpartum in winter and not keen on taking my tbaby out of the house. Okay, that's not the real reason. I didn't want to feel more alone than I already did. So I stayed home with my newborn and Christmas came and went.

The holidays have never been a particularly happy time in my life. Even with a terrific husband, this is a time of memories and melancholy for me. There are childhood Christmases I sort of remember that weren't horrible-- but none of them were truly happy. In a family like mine, well, there was always something to be sad about. I have had more than two dozen happier Christmases since then, but I have always felt like something was missing. I have always been grateful for this wonderful life I have made for myself, mostly because I know it could've gone in a completely different direction if I had been more a product of nurture than nature. Then again, perhaps I am a product of how I was raised-- I am determined that I will be happier than I was as a child. And I am determined my children will not have sad, melancholy memories trailing after them through life.

And so, yes, I write a lot about my kids. I had no real family to speak of, no magical, special home-and-hearth place where I felt safe and loved and supported. I didn't have a mother who tucked me into bed when I was sick and fed me chicken soup. My mother was of the, "If you're really sick, you won't be hungry and if you're hungry, you're well enough to come to the table" mindset. I was never a Daddy's girl and I'm not even sure my father (stepfather) remembers my birthday and he often misspelled my name (he married my mother when I was nine months old-- you'd think he'd remember that, at least). My brother and I were not best friends from birth, we were each other's nemesis in a hostile household, with him hating me for getting good grades and being the good child and me hating him because he got away with everything and was the "real" child. He turned out as you would expect the child of these parents who raised us to turn out. I am, as I have been told many times, an anomaly. Like everything else about me.

I write about my kids, my husband, this family of mine because I made it. I am a writer and I create characters and families every day, but here in my real life, I created the family I never had. I chose the man who would give me the love and nurturing I never got as a child, and he has given me all of that and more than I ever dreamed possible for going on twenty-three years. And, when I finally realized it was now or never and I needed to decide whether I wanted to have kids before Mother Nature decided it for me, I grew two children inside of me. I created my family. It's small, just the four of us, but it's double the size it was three years ago. And before that, when it was just two of us, I still had more of a sense of belonging in any house I lived with my husband than I ever did in the house where I grew up with people I didn't know or understand. I made my family. I love my friends, I am grateful to share holidays with people who are good and kind and funny and loving, happy that my kids have "aunts" and "uncles" and "cousins" and I will always call them part of my family. But now, like some miracle, I have this family of four that I feel as if I conjured from my dreams. We are happy, this family of mine. I spent a lot of years thinking such a thing wasn't even possible for me.

So yeah, that's why I write so much about my children.

Away in a Manger...the Baby Jesus got eaten by a lion.

(I wrote the original version of this post in 2003, long before I had children or even thought I would have children. Coming at this topic from a parental angle, I've expanded on my original thoughts.)

I am not particularly religious. I was raised vaguely Christian in an area of South Florida that was religiously diverse. I spent kindergarten through second grade attending a private Baptist school where the religious teachings, circa 1970s, suggested Jesus was a hippie and God was a benevolent grandpa. Funny how kids look at things. I memorized the books of both the Old and New Testaments at an early age (and can still recite them almost perfectly), but beyond that and learning about Noah and the ark and Jonah and the whale, I didn't retain much.

Now that I have children of my own, I find myself with the dilemma of what to teach them. I don't attend church and I don't have strong feelings about any particular religion. I have been called an atheist, but agnostic is probably a better fit. (Though the belief system I find myself most aligned with is Buddhism.) So what do I teach my kids? I suppose I will muddle through it as the situation arises, explaining what the Christmas represents and fielding questions about why we put up a Christmas tree. I do so love the pagan roots of the Christian traditions, so that part will be fun. But... what about the nativity? How do I explain the little dollhouse with Jesus and family? That is a dilemma.

One of my favorite childhood memories is setting up the nativity each year and hanging the angel named Gloria just so in front of the single lightbulb that illuminated the whole shebang. The stable had a straw-like roof, the wise men were appropriately ethnic (never mind that Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus were all peculiarly white) and everyone had a happy, reverential expression. I remember being disappointed there wasn't a little drummer boy, not realizing the song was written in 1958 (I just looked that up) and had nothing to do with the story of the original nativity.



I don't currently own a nativity set and have been searching for years for just the right one. Now that I have children, I'm more determined than ever to find a nativity that is reminiscent of the one I grew up with. These days, you can find a nativity scene of just about every flavor--including the Peanuts characters. But that's not the kind of nativity I want. Despite my lack of interest in most things Christian, I am picky about what I'm looking for in a nativity. What do I want?

I want a nativity scene that includes all the principles and isn't made out of plastic, fabric or cork. I want Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus to be made of an appropriate material and have real faces. I don't want them to be faceless art deco blown glass, burlap dolls bound with twine or abstract burnished metal silhouettes.

I want the three wise men with camels and the angel Gloria in all her blonde glory.

Speaking of stables, want a stable that looks like a stable and not a shoebox, a trailer or a Barbie Dream House. I want animals that belong in a nativity: cows, oxen, sheep and donkeys. Maybe a cat, but certainly not dogs, and definitely not a lion. I kid you not, I've seen a nativity with a lion.

It would be preferable if the baby Jesus were removable from the manger for those who wish to observe the tradition of leaving the him out of the nativity until Christmas day. I personally don't care, but it's a nice touch. It would be good if Gloria hung from the front of the stable and even better if there were a lightbulb behind her to cast a ethereal glow.

The Fontanini family comes closest to meeting my demands-- and they've been doing it for over a hundred years. They're expensive, but it's amazing what I'm willing to pay to have a baby Jesus who looks like a baby and not a Weeble. Of course, Patrick and Lucas won't care about my precious traditional nativity and will likely use the holy figures as drivers for their cars and trucks. Or as projectiles against each other. Hmm... maybe that Peanuts nativity isn't such a bad idea after all.

The No-Name Carol

by Jean Roberta.

While thinking about Holiday Nonsense, I thought about the current conflict over the eclipse of "Merry Christmas!" as a traditional greeting with "Happy Holidays!" and variations on that theme.

While I was deep in uffish thought, a sparkly holiday angel appeared and whispered this poem in my ear. (Unfortunately, she didn't give me a melody, but I'm sure one could be found. She also didn't tell me how to format lyrics here on the blog.) If she ever comes back, Garce, I'll encourage her to visit you next year.

The No-Name Carol
(by Jean, but it's free for copying & sharing)

“Put Christ back in Christmas!” the Christians declare. /“The thing is now pagan as hell. /It’s an orgy of greed, with no love and no care, /And when God’s wrath will come, who can tell?”

The Jews and the Muslims, the wiccans and all /Have been waiting for two thousand years /For love without limits to fill every hall, /While good will dries up crocodile tears.

“It’s all about Solstice,” the pagans explain, /“When we light up the darkness and sing. /The earth is snow-covered, but we don’t complain. / We’ll keep up our courage ‘till spring.”

“So call it whatever you like, and be glad /If you’ve got all you need for a party, /And can share the good times with a lass or a lad, /And help those without to eat hearty.”

Let’s not preach about holy men, sinless and pure. /This isn’t the time or the place. /Say “Cheer of the Season!” and don’t be a boor. /Just plaster* a smile on your face.



*Note: some folks find that getting plastered is a great help, but some can find ways to appear cheerful without drinking huge quantities of spiked eggnog. Your mileage may vary.

Sneaking time under the mistletoe!

Good morning my fellow grippers, and a Merry Christmas Eve to you all.

Ok, so that is about all the holiday cheer you are going to get out of me. I am off to work in about 30 minutes, and since right now I work in retail, it will be a interesting time. Each year differs slightly. Tomorrow though .. yeah, tomorrow is the time for holiday goodness. : )

The topic this week is Holiday Sex, and yes, I am to blame for the struggle some of my fellow grippers had with it. All I can say is, oops!

LOL

I figured a topic called Holiday Sex would get everyone thinking back ...

I know when I think Holiday Sex, I think of the newlyweds who are staying at one of their parents house for the holidays, and even though they are all grown up, and married now, they still feel a quality of sneaking around as they lay in bed together, kising, caressing, hoping no one in the household knows what they are up to.

Or maybe, it's Thankgiving, and Uncle Bert is passed out in front of the TV and they are sitting on the couch, very carefully touching under clothing so if anyone looks in, or Bert should snore himself awake, no one will know.

Whatever the meal that is being cooked, there is always the delightful game of molest the cook, while his/her hands are busy prepping food, washing dishes, etc. You know what I am talking about ... sliding a hand under the apron and down the front of the pants, slowly stroking against flesh, teasing without plans to bring things to fruition. (Although, this is not exclusive to holidays)

There's always Valentine's Day ... but most people know a little bit of nooky is going on then, so there isn't much of a sneak factor.

But what about Easter. Sneaking into the kitchen after the kids have fallen asleep, and melting down one of the giant chocolate bunnies and hurrying back into the bedroom with the pan carefully held so as not to tdribble melted chocolate on the rug. The frenzied stripping, as the chocolate hurriedly cools. Then, the agony/pleasure as it is dribbled on bare skin, the slight sting since it still has some heat to it. And then the rapture, oh godness the intense pleasure, as it is licked off drip by drip.

Or my favorite - Earth Day. *smiles* Going hiking with the family and splitting off when you find a nice secluded overhang just deep enough to sneak under where you lay down on the moist ground and with all of nature watching you, you have a quickie, leaving your bra as a signpost of your time spent there.

Those are the paths my mental wanderings take when I think Holiday Sex.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!

A Pagan Christmas Wish

Christmas has always been a pagan time of year.

Somewhere around the 4^th Century, the Church picked December 25^th as the date to celebrate Christ's birth in a special "Christ's Mass". The date was selected so that the Christians could compete with established pagan winter feasts like Saturnalia, Juvenilia and Samhain. The New Testament has nothing to say about the day or month that Christ was born on. Making Jesus a Capricorn was strictly a marketing ploy.

As I've watched Christmases slide by over the past few decades, it seems to me that the pagan nature of the festival has started to assert itself more and more. It has become a festival in which we throw ourselves into excess with as much noise, light, alcohol and food as we can lay our hands on.

Christmas parties are a time to get pissed enough to have the courage to try and get off with the girl from accounting with the big tits and the heart-shaped arse, while still having plausible deniability if you fail to pull or fail to get it up or fail to remember her name in the morning.

Christmas is a time when gangs of well-fleshed young women strut through night-dark streets, in tiny Santa's Little Helper uniforms that flash more flesh than they make the effort to stretch over.

Christmas is a peak time for the sale of sex toys and fluffy handcuffs and nickers with "I'm Your Christmas Ho Ho Ho" printed across the arse.

Men's magazine's run jokey articles on the best positions for a festive fuck, with illustrations of "The Sleigh," "Jingle Balls", "The Reindeer" and, inevitably perhaps, "Come All Ye Faithful".

None of this is my kind of thing.

My Christmas is indeed pagan. It centres not on a born-to-die-for-me baby with parents too clueless to book accommodation when they traveled – that lack of practicality makes a virgin birth almost plausible. My Christmas centres on celebrating life; specifically my wife's life and the fact that she continues to share it with me.

When we were in our teens, Christmas Day belonged to our families and we would spend it apart, so we developed the habit of celebrating on Christmas Eve beneath the Christmas Tree. We were young. We were not having sex. And yet one of the strongest sense memories I have is what it felt like to kiss and be kissed in the soft glow of the Christmas Tree lights:

Warmth

Joy

Hope

Excitement

Love

For me these are the pagan spirits Christmas evokes each year.

I hope as many of them as you would wish for find you this Christmas Eve.

Just Checking...

Who do I write for? ME. But this being Christmas, I suppose I could be nice enough to share. Don't say I never gave you anything...

Just Checking


by Helen E. H. Madden


(originally aired on the Heat Flash Erotica Podcast, December 2007)

"Elf patrol! Open up!"

George stumbled into the living room, fumbling with his robe. Elf patrol? What the hell kind of joke was that to play on Christmas Eve? He flung open his front door, ready to chew out the pranksters, but stopped cold when he saw who was standing there.

"Are you George Greer?"

"Uuuuuuuuh..." George gawked. A midget, an Amazon, and a reindeer stood on his porch.

"I'll take that as a yes," the midget chirped. "Mr. Greer, I'm Fred Finklestein of the Holiday Elf List Patrol. That's H-E-L-P. This is Reggie, the Brown-nosed Reindeer, and uh, my partner, Mable."

"Sable Mable," the Amazon said, with a toss of her glossy black hair. She sauntered into the house, brushing up against George as she passed. She and Fred wore matching red and green outfits, but hers was leather and very low cut.

"Mr. Greer," Fred prattled on. "We're just here to double check the list--"

"List?" George croaked as Mable hitched up her skirt and draped herself across the couch.

"You know," she purred. "The one that decides who gets presents and who gets a lump of coal?"

"Oh! The list!"

"Exactly," Fred chimed in. "Before we can authorize any gift deliveries to this house, we need to ask you just one question. Answer correctly and you'll get your heart's desire. Answer wrong, and well, there will be consequences."

George blinked. "Um, okay. Shoot."

"Mr. Greer, are you now, or have you been, at any point during the past calendar year, to include federal holidays and weekends, with allowances made for standard and daylight savings time, annoying, bawdy, contrary, disobedient, disorderly, evil, exasperating, fiendish, fractious, froward, headstrong, ill-behaved, impish, indecorous, insubordinate, intractable, lewd, mischievous, obscene, off-color, perverse, playful, rascally, raunchy, recalcitrant, refractory, ribald, risque, roguish, rough, rowdy, sinful, teasing, ungovernable, unmanageable, unruly, wanton, wayward, wicked, willful, worthless, or just plain bad?"

"Huh?"

"In English, Floyd," Mable drawled.

"That's Fred!"

"Whatever. Mr. Greer, what Shortie here wants to know is, have you been naughty, or nice?"

Mable got up from the couch and stalked toward George, hips swaying with every step. She pressed up against him, backing him into the artificial tree until the angel on top threatened to fall.

"It's an important question," Mable said, chest heaving with every word. "So think carefully. Have you been a good boy, someone who goes to bed early, never drinks, never fights, never swears - you just stay home every Friday night, safe and snug in bed? Or is there something you've done this past year that you shouldn't have? Something you're ashamed of? Something you wouldn't want Mommy to find out about?"

"Mommy?" George squeaked.

"Mm-hmm," Mabel replied. She leaned closer to whisper in his ear. "Tell me, Georgie, which is it? Naughty or nice?"

George closed his eyes and whimpered. Mabel towered over him, a dark, sultry presence that threatened to eat him alive. Her breath blew hot against his cheek as she waited, like a predator, for his answer.

"Well?" she prompted.

"Um, naughty?"

Mabel stepped back and smiled. "Shortie, you and the reindeer take a hike. Georgie boy is all mine."

As the door slammed shut behind them, Fred threw down his clipboard.

"God dammit! That's the twelfth guy in a row. I don't get it, Reggie. He's got no priors, not even a parking ticket. So why does he fuck it up at the last second by lying about being naughty, huh? Can you explain this to me?"

Reggie peeked through the front window in time to see Mable yank down George's pajama bottoms and draw him over her knee. The man yelped as her gloved hand came down hard across his bare buttocks.

"Well duh!" Reggie said.