12 Days of Christmas in the Season of Yule

by Kali Willows

Of course, with our children, we have a Christmas Tree, Nativity scene, exchange thoughtful greeting cards & gift wrapped items, and of most definitely, we bake pumpkin pie and stuffed turkey, among other traditions. With all the fixings aside, we also welcome and celebrate different aspects of the holiday season from many cultures.

During this time of festivities, the main focal point in most media and with a vast majority of us evolves around the birth of Jesus, Santa Claus, mangers, wise men and so on. I often find a real shortage of non-Christian based religious acknowledgements. With this, I find my heroine Tessa Ledger at a bit of a disadvantage, talking about her 1NS story Damnation & Desire.

Now, Tessa connects with a Pastor, Samson Langely, or rather, a smoking, hot, man of the cloth, (is that blasphemous? I hope not). So as you could well imagine, if their meeting was outside of the Witch’s New Year (Halloween), we may have had an entirely different story line to read, with varying conflicts, plot and character development!

Tessa would typically celebrate the Yule season a little differently than stuffing stockings and shopping at the mall for the perfect gift. She would note, in her religion, (Wicca), that Yule is a 12 day holiday, it begins on "Mothers Night" (December 21st) and ends 12 days later on "Yule Night" (January 1st). It's the origin for the Christian "12 Days of Christmas". (Although, I’m not so sure she would credit the 12 days of Christmas song and lyrics.) 

She would also tell you that, for all its inputs and influences, Yule is still an important time of the year to pagans around the world. In the most direct terms it is still a festival that honors the cycle of nature and the Wheel of the Year. Tessa would show how the Ancient pagans had a strong tie with honoring the solstices through out the year.

The winter solstice brings about the return of the sun and longer days and a celebration of the survival of cold winter months. Yule is also known as the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere and the summer solstice in the southern hemisphere due to the seasonal differences. Yule, (pronounced EWE-elle) is when the dark half of the year relinquishes to the light half. Starting the next morning at sunrise, the sun climbs just a little higher and stays a little longer in the sky each day. 

Now, as for me? Break out the Egg Nog and unwrap the Candy Canes! It’s time to celebrate and rejoice! This is a time of year I make a point of recognizing, and being even more thankful for all the blessings in my life, & all the challenges! Although this is a daily mantra for me already, I make a point of doing a little more good, a random act of kindness, an anonymous gesture of generosity, knowing that somehow, it may add to someone else’s enjoyment of the holiday season, and hopefully return some of the wonderful karma that has blessed my life.

Happy Holidays & Happy Reading!

Blessings,

Kali Willows

Damnation & Desire blurb:

A Wiccan descendent of a notorious victim of the Salem witch trials, Tessa Ledger is obsessed with the Malleus Maleficarum and its claim that women are susceptible to the influence of the devil through their sexuality. Tessa seeks the services of 1Night Stand to tame her blazing carnal desires, and perform a little experiment on bewitching men. Her date is to take place in Salem…on the most supernatural night possible, where the veil between the living and the dead is at its thinnest and anything can happen.

Samson Langley is a highly revered clergyman in a small town near Salem. Being a positive community leader and overcoming his ancestral legacy has been his lifelong purpose, but his natural urges plague him night and day. With a few qualms, he agrees to his mentor’s suggestion to exorcise his personal demons with a date arranged by Madame Evangeline of 1Night Stand. He doesn’t expect to find his own faith and integrity in question as he is faced with satisfaction, or damnation in the arms of a one-night stand.

Genre: Paranormal, contemporary, erotic romance
Heat level: 4
Word count – 13k
Cover art by Fantasia Frog Designs