It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas
On December 17, please, please check out this blog site (two days from the date of this newsletter for those of us weaker in math skills!). Fellow author Liz Flaherty (see the October blog interview) asked me to write an essay for her series of holiday blogs. I’ve written about the first Christmas with our children, and I’m very happy with the final story. I loved sharing a special time and an indelible memory.
Here in my own blog this month, I want to cover a cornucopia of holiday-related topics.
First, let’s talk about language. When I mentioned to coworker editors that I would be covering some holiday grammar issues, they jumped on it right away. Here are some language pet peeves at this time of year:
Signing your Christmas cards as The Walkers’ or The Walker’s: Your family is not possessive in and of itself. (See the August blog.) You are the Walkers, plural.
Writing “Merry Xmas”: It’s okay to abbreviate Christmas as Xmas. The X stands for the Greek letter chi, which is the first letter in the word Christ. Therefore, “Xmas” is “Christmas.” It is not “taking the Christ out of Christmas.” In fact, it’s keeping “Christ” in.
Capitalizing “Eve”: Use initial capitalization for the word “Eve” if it is officially part of the holiday name: Christmas Eve, New Year’s Eve, and even All Hallows Eve. Lowercase it if it’s the night before a holiday but not part of the official holiday name: Thanksgiving eve, Valentine’s eve, and so on.
·Spelling the holiday Hanukkah or Chanukah: Spell it the way your audience prefers you to spell it. A Google search will give you some great explanations about different ways to spell the holiday and, more important, why.
Sparing the exclamation points: In your holiday letters, and all your writing, reduce the number of exclamation points. My father noted recently that people have gone exclamation-point happy. Not only does it take away from the times you really should be using that punctuation, but also it can be difficult to read. (A publisher once told me her press allows only six exclamation points per romantic novel.)
Second, there are a boatload of Christmas romance novels out there, so check them out. There’s mine, of course, but don’t miss this one by my college friend and more-recent critique partner Laura Nelson Selinsky: Season of Hope. There are also several by Nan Reinhardt, including her latest Christmas in River’s Edge, and Liz Flaherty, including her novella in Lights, Camera, Christmas Town, each of whom have been interviewed in this newsletter and blog.
Finally, what is a holiday blog without holiday movies? Please tell me your favorite. Here are some of mine, in no particular order:
A Charlie Brown Christmas
The Man Who Invented Christmas
It’s a Wonderful Life
A Christmas Movie Christmas
A Christmas Carol (the black-and-white one with Alistair Sims), although my hubby is a big fan of Scrooged
Hallmark romances: not all, but most!
To my friends who celebrate, Happy Hanukkah and Merry Christmas!
Forgive my typo last month in the first sentence of the newsletter. It should have been “messing up,” not “missing up.”
And please read my guest blog on Liz’s blogspace.
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