The Christmas House
A verified Amazon review-The Christmas House is the embodiment of the Christmas Spirit. Magical, wondrous, full of the warmth generated by the company of family and friends during good times and hard. This book hits you with a healthy dose of reality, but it also takes you on a fantastical journey filled with hope and joy, grace and forgiveness. If you don't examine it too closely, but just let the words transport you on a trip that will engage your emotions and give you cause to ponder what can be real, what may be true - if "close your eyes" and open your heart, this book will bring it all to life and make you believe. I found this book engaging from the first chapter, it kept drawing me in, pulling me into the world of the house and those who live there, as well as those individuals who visit once every year at Christmas. This story is not without tragedy, but it is also infused with the glorious strength and bright light that the human spirit is capable of producing, with a little divine help and the steadfast support of the people who love you. I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning, wanting to see what happened next, anxious to find out what happened to the characters in the book I had grown to care about. The story surrounds your senses and brings the sights and smells, the many textures of Christmas to your heart, as it lifts your spirit up and makes you wonder...This podcast offers the first four chapters of the novel. The entire audio book will not be available on Amazon until Thanksgiving 2022. More episodes (chapters) will be added in the future.
The Christmas House
Chapter Sixteen- Thanksgiving It Is Not
Festive Lane
Thanksgiving Day
Three years later
Several years passed, and the Carters were very fortunate during this time. It had been five years since they first purchased the magical house on Festive Lane. David grew by leaps and bounds as he quickly approached his sixteenth birthday. Nicole had become a beautiful young lady with a very proficient vocabulary for a five-year-old.
Michael had been promoted to management in the same construction company and was now a building inspector. Arianna was the dispatch supervisor for the local Lake Forest Police Department. Their lives were relatively uneventful over the last three years. Accept for the Christmas holiday celebration and the annual visit of Tony Cesario trying to purchase the Festive Lane property, life remained steady.
Every Christmas, the guests arrived and visited with the Carters. Dennis joined the celebration all three years but would not be attending the upcoming holiday gathering due to accepting a new job in California. He still considered the parents who raised him to be just as much his parents as Art and Marie. He felt being closer to them geographically would be beneficial.
Since last year, Michael has been busy at work and home. He liked his new management position because it gave him more flexibility to be with the kids and Arianna. At home, he finally installed a new furnace in the house's basement. Unfortunately, the unit wouldn’t stay lit for more than a few minutes at a time. He had to keep shutting it off and re-adjusting the gas flow. He just tried to fix it again yesterday, but the problem persisted.
This morning, Michael left a note on the thermostat to warn Arianna not to turn on the furnace until he came home. He would stop at the hardware store before they closed early for the holiday. He needed to get a few parts that he felt would resolve the problem with the furnace. He placed the sticky-backed note on the thermostat cover in the front foyer so Arianna would be sure to see it.
It was Thanksgiving Day, and as usual, Jack and Wanda were invited over for Thanksgiving dinner. It was early afternoon, and Wanda watched the kids while Arianna worked at the police station. Michael had to approve some job sites for last-minute inspections before the weekend and ran late. The kids helped Wanda make cookies for dessert as Jack was up in his office, working on some investment paperwork. While laying out clumps of cookie dough, Wanda ran out of cookie sheets and decided to borrow a few from Arianna’s kitchen.