Today I'm excited to welcome author Sarah Lamb as she shares about Christmas Eve traditions, as well as her latest releases.

This Christmas season, I have one novel and two short stories coming out, all taking place at Christmas time. Traditions play heavily into two of the stories, and I wondered as I was writing one of them, are the ways we celebrate Christmas and the traditions that we have now, very different from those several hundred years ago?

The answer surprised me when I did a little research. In the 1800s, Christmas was celebrated in many of the same ways it is now. There were large meals, baked goods, Christmas songs, gift giving, church, and greeting cards sent to loved ones. The larger the town or city, the easier it was to celebrate. Friends and family were closer, store bought items were easier to come by, and a snowstorm didn’t necessarily mean the end of any festivity or visiting church.

In the West, with wide open prairies and brutal blizzards that time of year, the Christmas season was celebrated in a more humble fashion, but with no less joy. Gifts might be homemade rather than store bought, and perhaps there were no nearby friends or family to make merry with, but the women pioneers did their best to make the day special for their families. Homes were decorated with whatever they could find in nature, such as pine cones and pine branches or berries. Women baked and sewed gifts, while men tried to hunt for game to make a feast, and carved wooden toys.

Thinking of how everyone prepared for Christmas weeks in advance is no different from how we are today. While we have the benefit of modern appliances to cook quickly, only shopping that brings things to our doorsteps seven days a week, and video calls, sometimes I wonder… would a return to those simpler times be more enjoyable?

If you’d like a glimpse into three very special Christmas Eves, consider looking at my Amazon page, where you can find my Christmas ebooks available for preorder: Christmas Treasure Cottage, An Angel for Alice, and A Second Chance for Beatrice.

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Christmas Treasure

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0B7CP56VB

An Angel for Alice

https://www.amazon.com/Angel-Alice-Christmas-Historical-Romance-ebook/dp/B0BGG7QCNB

A Second Chance for Beatrice

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BGGB2HK4