We've already received a couple of lovely fictional morsels for your enjoyment. Every morning there will be something to start your day off with a smile. Maybe I'll share a favorite holiday song or a lovely photo or maybe I'll give something away. Some days we'll have fiction, some days we'll have art, but one thing for sure, every day will have something for you to enjoy.
There really is nothing for you to do but show up and enjoy. It's just my way of saying Thank You.
Today I'm giving away three signed copies of If Only In My Dreams. This is a print collection of my five Christmas novellas--most of them never in print before. Just share what you like best about the holiday season in the comment section below, and I'll randomly pick three of you to win a signed copy of If Only in My Dreams.
Thanks for doing this as I love the Advent Calendar. I love the family time and joy on the kids' faces.
ReplyDeleteHow exciting! What I like best are the spirit of goodwill, lights, family, and your Advent Calendar! I love your little video. Happy December.
ReplyDeleteDear Josh,
ReplyDeleteI like getting together with my family and just enjoying each other's company. We've had so many shared memories through the years, and reliving favorite episodes are always good for tons of laughs.
One thing I very much like about your blog is the changing banner photo. You always find a great one for each season, and this one is no exception; it's gorgeous. In the Winter, I love seeing snowy, misty shots predominately in silver and white.
Looking forward to each day of this year's Advent Calendar, Josh. Thank you for your continuing generosity.
We don't really celebrate Christmas at my house, but I love the cheers of the Holiday season. A lot of people are excited, there's lights decoration on the streets, Christmas songs. And best of all, it's COLD and the time of the year I allow myself to read all the holidays books I collected during past eleven months. Hot coffee, blanket and fluffyness.
ReplyDeleteSparkling lights, eggnog, Christmas carols, smuggling in warm, cozy blankets while watching Hallmark Christmas movies.
ReplyDeleteOh, yeah, checking in every morning to see what new offering is on the Advent Calendar.
So many things! I love decorating. Seeing the tree up and decorated always makes me smile. I love baking Christmas cookies from old family recipes. They're delicious, and they also give me a sense of family connection that I treasure. And I love coming together with family for the holiday to eat good food and enjoy each other's company. Thanks for the chance at such a wonderful prize! - Toni violet817(at)aol(dot)com
ReplyDeleteThanks, Josh! This is my favorite time of year!
ReplyDeleteChristmas lights! I love the lights! The way they twinkle and sparkle and just make me smile. I know that heaven will have many fairy lights!!
ReplyDeleteSpending time with family.
ReplyDeleteI’m not celebrating Christmas but this time of the year I love coming to public places and listening to Holidays songs being played, the festive decorations, AND... the holidays movies rerun on tv. Not that I spend much time watching tv but just knowing the options are there. I’m happy. :)
ReplyDeleteAlso, I love the many holidays stories being release (or re-release) on December. Which reminds me... I need to reread The Dickens with Love again!! :)
I love at this time of year how everyone allows themselves just a little bit more: giving, eating, enjoying, loving. Everything's dialled up to 11 for a month or two and it just raises happiness levels all round.
ReplyDeleteHappy First Day of December! One of my favorite things about the holiday season is Christmas carols. I grew up in the Northern Peninsula (Michigan) where it’s quite cold and white in winter. Our church had a tradition of going caroling and we’d all bundle up and carpool and gather and sing carols at the homes of people we knew and sometimes didn’t know. Hearing them now always reminds me of wonder and awe I felt as a child when I experienced all the sights and sounds and smells. It was a more innocent time - there’s something about the nostalgia of childhood - and sometimes I long for those times.
ReplyDeleteHow lovely that it’s Advent Calendar time!
ReplyDeleteWell, Christmas may have its family off-moments, but I’ve never had a truly bad one. This year my (newly-divorced - but that’s a positive thing) daughter and twin grandsons over from Australia. YAY!
I'll admit, as a retail drone, for a decade or more I couldn't have come up with something I loved about the season for anything going. I loathed and dreaded and even resented the whole entire mess. I'd have just as soon skipped past the celebrating personally. But now, three years out from that hell, with a different perspective, and a young 7 year old nephew who adores Christmas, I've begun to see the magic again. This year he and I are going to make a tree garland out of paper mobious strips (his idea), and I'm charmed and delighted at the prospect of sharing that with him.
ReplyDeleteI love the traditions...putting up the tree, decorating the house, driving around to look at Christmas lights, family dinners! I love the holidays!
ReplyDeleteOne of my favorite holiday traditions is wrapping 24 Christmas books for my daughter and reading one together every night until Christmas. Happy December!
ReplyDeleteWell to be truthful K and I don't celebrate Christmas. We are not religious and haven't much in the way of family. We don't decorate the house, just put up Christmas cards. We don't have a Christmas dinner and Christmas day is just a day like any other. It's not that we are Grinches but we like to celebrate when we have something worth celebrating and we won't be forced into anyone else's expectations. That's not to say we don't respect anyone else celebrating - we wish you all well and Seasons Greetings.
ReplyDeleteWelllll, JL Advent Calendar is definitely one of the things I like best about the holiday season. :-D
ReplyDeleteTwinkling lights, snow, holiday-themed stories. All the decorations and the music. :-)
ReplyDeleteKC
So excited for your advent this year! Normally I would say cozy family time, but my lo is pretty excited about all of the lights everywhere. Thank you!
ReplyDeletefamily and friends getting together we havnt see each other since last xmas x
ReplyDeleteI just want to say that I love your blog cover photo, and I want to wish you Happy Holidays, as well. I picture your advent calendar like a stocking on Christmas morning, always full of wonderful surprises. Thank you! :)
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ReplyDeleteThe music. I LOVE Christmas music and seeing the landscapes change as the snow falls Down to cover the ground and trees.
ReplyDeleteOh, that sounds like a keeper for every Fanyon's bookshelf.
ReplyDeleteSnapshot memories of Christmas’s past, including the childish expectations of what might be under the tree 🌲, Santa beard and gathering of family.
ReplyDeleteChristmas time is extra special for me since Christmas eve is my birthday, so I get holiday food and cake! And get to see my kids be happy running around and playing after opening presents and having cake is just a blast.
ReplyDeleteNow holiday season is officially started with your advent calendar! Thank you!
ReplyDeleteI really love go shopping buying Christmas's gifts and baking Panettone with my husband.
Greetings! Had the best time reading Metaphors and Murder Series!!!!! Wow! So fun!!! And love the voice throughout Curse of the Blue Scarab! [Reading now!]
ReplyDeleteLooking forward to this December's daily blog, you and your fans always make it special!
R - Oregon
Christmas music, for sure.
ReplyDeleteThx!!
Thank you for sharing your gift with us!
ReplyDeleteI love hearing from old friends and distant family during the holidays - the thrill of a Christmas card in the mailbox, an out-of-the-blue phone call, an unexpected afternoon visit. Love them all!
I love the hope and joy that takes over the people, me included. No other time of a year can compete. I smile just looking at the snow falling down. It's all white and clean and happy (God willing, we'll have snow this winter). Lamps and holiday decorations around the town. Like a promise of a better days ahead. I hope.
ReplyDeletegoge
I like being with family all day, then going home to a quiet house!
ReplyDeleteI really love the family time during the holidays. It is more than just the one day of Christmas. I love driving through neighborhoods looking at the Decorations 🎄
ReplyDeleteI love picking the perfect gift for my kids - they're grown now (20 & 14) so it's getting more challenging, but worth it to see their smiles.
ReplyDeleteWhat I like most of this holiday is sharing time with my family. I enjoy seeing how the children enjoy the festivities, and the family dinners are very special, I would not dare to say they are a success, but they are always.... interesting.
ReplyDeleteI love the family get together that we do before Christmas as much as the day itself. We meet up, eat and exchange gifts, because I usually work on Christmas day it's much more relaxed.
ReplyDeleteI like advent calendars the most. It's like a small little present every day and mom normally makes me one, so she thought of me while making it and that makes me so happy.
ReplyDeleteLiving on an island I always enjoy the returnees - friends who live away and uni students back for the festivities!
ReplyDeleteGoogle Account not working again!
From Suze
Littlesuze @ hotmail.com
The warmth of the season (even though it's winter!). Sharing with others,being together with friends and family, snuggling with my husband, and enjoying the food and drink too! ;-)
ReplyDeleteI love the overall festive atmosphere & that friends and family make an extra effort to get together.
ReplyDeleteI'd love to be able to say something about spending the holidays with family and friends, but my favorite thing about the holidays is not having to work, which gives me more time to read and write. Although I do very much enjoy picking presents on Amazon for my grandkids. That's a lot of fun.
ReplyDeleteI've worked in retail for over 30 years now and I love the peace and quiet of Christmas Day and Boxing Day. And no I'm don't go out shopping on Boxing Day and I don't work it either.
ReplyDeleteSacred and traditional Christmas music, JL Advent Calendar, Christmas cookies. Christmas stories in all formats--print audio or video. Happy holidays everyone. j dot stonewright at gmail dot com
ReplyDeleteI love the lights and putting up the tree and spending time with my family.
ReplyDeleteIt's actually hard to describe, what I like best about the season... It's the whole "festive feeling" that I start to have from the beginning of December till Christmas.
ReplyDeleteThe "taking time to bake Christmas cookies" (though you have absolutely more "useful" things to do), spending time with family and friends, listening to Christmas carols (I really like those, even though I usually don't listen to music the rest of the year!).
My favorite part of the holiday season is hearing Mariah Carey's 'All I Want For Christmas'. It's silly, I know, but that song makes me so happy.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite things about the holidays are the food and taking vacation time just to stay home and read.
ReplyDeleteJust did what I love best tonight - decorated the living room with my eight year old, turned our all overhead lights and sang carols by Christmas lights while she randomly strummed her ukelele. Perfect!
ReplyDeleteFamily, friends, and the way most everyone becomes a little kinder. Strangers smile, people extend holiday wishes and, for a little while, the world is closer to what it should be all the time.
ReplyDeleteThe holidays at Disneyworld. :)
ReplyDeleteAll the joy and hope that get into people, me included. It's snowing right now and I smile looking through my window. The snow, well, lot of it, make the world clean and bright. And the Christmas decorations around town... Pure magic. And hope. For all of us.
ReplyDeleteGoge
First, I would just like to say that I fell in love with this book the first time I've seen its cover. I love white Christmas & to say that its cover design is a perfect fit is an understatement. ^_^ And to answer your question, well...that would simply be shenanigans followed by bouts of laughter with my cousins on Christmas morning.
ReplyDeleteThe lights, the lights, the lights! Why can't we have Christmas lights up all year round? But then I suppose it wouldn't be as enchanting this time of year. Still there is nothing like the sparkle of twinkling lights on hearty evergreens especially with snow on the ground, frost on the windows and icicles on the eaves all viewed from the warmth of a cozy fire-lit den on Christmas Eve.
ReplyDeleteWhat I love about the holiday season is...practically everything - from the festive decorations to the yearly Christmas movies on TV. This year for this particular month, my challenge is to read only Christmas stories, hopefully including Josh's If Only in my Dreams.
ReplyDeleteI love the heat and summer sunshine more than the short, cold wintry days, but for the Christmas season I make an exception: I do love the cosy warmth of days spent indoors with family and close friends, playing silly games, opening presents, reconnecting with people I may not have seen for a long time, and of course eating lovely home-made (mostly!) seasonal festive food that you know someone has put an extra effort to create with love and the seasonal spirit. Sadly, it is also a time when I can't help thinking of loved ones who are no longer with us, loved ones who had made so many Christmasses of my childhood special and memorable. That is life too; and I try not to let these memories sadden the mood, but keep them alive by remembering and sharing them with the youngest members of my family. Merry Christmas, Josh! Paola
ReplyDeleteBest part of the holiday season are those quiet little moments at night, with soft, festive lights glowing as you snuggle under warm blankets and sip something steaming (preferably a hot toddy... but hot chocolate does nicely!) and for a short while your mind clears of all the daily crap and you just float in the present.
ReplyDelete(Now, can I have some of these moments this year, santa? Please? :P)
The best thing about holidays to me is spending them with family. In the past it meant an 8-hour drive and escaping my problems to visit, but this year I live close enough that it will just be a visit for the day. I think I might be a little disappointed by that, actually. :)
ReplyDeleteNO WORK!
ReplyDeleteSpoiling my nieces and nephews. Snuggling by the Christmas tree with my bf. Eating too much.
ReplyDelete