Giftmas 2020!

Every year, I join Rhonda Parrish’s Giftmas blog tour, a circle of authors sharing Christmas and other seasonal cheer to raise money for the Edmonton Food Bank. This year our theme is Connections — which, I’m not gonna lie, struck me as a tough theme in 2020.

Gonna be real honest, uncomfortably honest, for a moment here.

I live in a very divided country. I don’t want to spend a lot of blog time on politics, but this is the worst rancor I can remember in my lifetime, with overt appeals to exclusionary tribalism and the deliberate stoking of blatant falsehoods to attack what we claim to value. This year I have watched people I thought I knew reveal facets I wish I still didn’t know. Several people, including someone I have known literally since my birth, quit the church* we’ve attended together for years rather than continue membership alongside someone who went to an anti-racism protest — without ever even speaking to me about it. As I write, there’s a concentrated effort to overthrow our democratic election using affidavits which are worded differently when summarized on television than when presented in court and an angry call to actually split the country like it’s 1860. Things which I would have thought were common sense touchstones (democracy good, police brutality bad) have become political landmines. It feels like a year of repeated betrayals.

And oh, there’s a pandemic on, which means I’m working from home, experiencing conferences as just more scheduled online videos, meeting clients virtually, missing social events with friends, and generally suppressing constant frustration as I look between the friend working in the COVID-19 unit and the other arguing personal preference is more important than public health, only we shouldn’t phrase it that way, it’s really just that virus is already gone — oh, look, lying politics again.

It’s been a rough year for connections.

So I stared at Rhonda’s theme for a few minutes, wondering what I could do with it in a year where I have both never felt so isolated and never been so relieved to be away from people.

But all that is what makes this a good year to think about connections.

Every year I organize a creative retreat for some friends, where we work on writing fiction, needlework, editing video, writing tabletop game scenarios, or other creative endeavors. In 2019 we were having trouble coordinating a time, so we decided together to put it off until April of 2020. You can guess how that turned out.

So we took the group online, forming a running chat group with most of us. And because we were no longer meeting in person, we were even able to expand. That group has been my lifeline through 2020. We have commiserated together on the dearth of creative energy this year, on the frustrations of watching a society self-immolate in tantrums (one of our members is in New Zealand, where things were handled very differently), and shared a lot of support and humor when we needed to hear something that wasn’t the news.

This is a year to evaluate what really matters. My family has a lot of holiday traditions, and it was glorious to find that, while we’ll certainly miss them, there was no hesitation in giving up things we like to protect the people we love. That hasn’t been a universal attitude, and it helps to know that our connections matter.

And so I’m continuing to stay home and limit contacts, not because I am afraid, but because we are told to love our neighbor, and we protect the people we love. We are far more connected than we think, even in our political parties and our tribalism, and we are to love one another.

I don’t know most of the people in Edmonton, but I’m going to ask you to donate with me to love them, too. Our goal this year is to provide 3,000 meals. You can donate here, and that’s a direct link, no money through my or Rhonda’s hands. (Plus, American donors get more bang for the buck with the exchange!)

And, if you’ve read this far, I have a Giftmas gift for you. (That’s a bit redundant, I suppose.)

First, remember that Untold Podcast recently released “Wight Christmas,” a story which appeared first in Rhonda’s anthology Mrs. Claus. That’s available for listening on demand.

Second, the shiny new gift, is a seasonal story in the Shard of Elan world.

As you may know, I try to have a short read for Giftmas each year, generally about 500-1000 words long. This year, perhaps because I wrote in that epic fantasy world, the story got a bit away from me and is roughly 5,500 words long. So it’s a separate download.

This would be, if I were submitting it as fanfic, a drabble. Maybe even a fluff, I’m not sure. It’s a Shard of Elan story, with the characters Elan readers already know, but to avoid spoilers it’s set in a sort of alternate timeline, and while the ongoing story tends to drama and action, this particular piece is the Hallmark holiday movie of the Shard of Elan world. It will read best if you’ve finished book 1, Shard & Shield, but for knowing characters, not for plot. It’s the story of Luca’s first winter solstice in Alham and his childhood memories of the Wintersong, and it fits with our Giftmas theme of connections.

[download link]

Again, we’d greatly appreciate if you would make a donation with us to help others in this trying year. Thank you, and Merry Christmas and happy holidays!

*In response to the inevitable “well, that’s what we expect of church people” response: First, trust me, you are not more frustrated by the vocal political movement masquerading as a religious one than I am. Second, I’ll point out these church people were upset because other church people held a very different opinion. Stereotypes aren’t helpful.