Why I Fall For Christmas Stories Every Single Year

Every year I tell myself I’m going to be sensible about the holidays.
I will not buy more wrapping paper.
I will not eat my body weight in shortbread.
I will not reread or rewatch a mountain of Christmas stories.

And every year I lie.

Because here is the truth: I am a complete pushover for Christmas stories.

Give me a snowed-in small town, twinkle lights, a found family dinner, and two people who pretend they are not wildly in love with each other, and I am done. Tap out. Take my evening. Take my weekend. Take my to-do list and bury it under a pile of candy canes.

If you are new here, I’m Tia, an author of fantasy and paranormal romance for women who love escapist, emotional stories with strong heroines and supernatural trouble. I also write these letters the same way I write my books: a little bit emotional, a little bit chaotic, and with a side of sharp honesty.

So why do I love Christmas stories so much?

1. Built-in magic

Even in contemporary settings, Christmas stories cheat. The world is already sprinkled with magic.
Strangers are nicer.
The coffee shop suddenly smells like sugar cookies and poor financial decisions.
You can put a tree in your living room and cover it in shiny objects, and everyone agrees this is normal.

Fantasy authors look at all that and think, Ah yes. My natural habitat.

2. Permission to believe in impossible things

Christmas stories are basically a seasonal permission slip to believe in the impossible.
Of course the grumpy single dad across the street secretly has a heart of gold.
Of course the girl who swore off love meets a man with a secret and a smile that complicates everything.
Of course the small town that has somehow never updated its snowplow will host a perfectly timed winter festival anyway.

Real life can be messy and loud and exhausting. Christmas stories say: sit down, drink something warm, and let the world work out for once.

3. Comfort with a side of chaos

The holidays are not actually peaceful.
They are glitter and traffic and someone forgetting the cranberry sauce every single year.

That is why I love curling up with a Christmas romance that guarantees two things:

Feelings will be had.
Everything will be okay by the last page.

You can cry over the heroine’s broken heart, laugh when the cat knocks over the tree, and still know the ending will land where it should. It is emotional chaos in a padded room.

4. Writing my own Christmas chaos

This is also why I had so much fun writing Cougar’s Christmas.

I took all my favorite things:

A heroine who thinks she knows exactly what she wants
A hero who complicates that plan in wonderfully inconvenient ways
The kind of Christmas where nothing goes quite right, but everything ends up exactly where it should

Then I wrapped it all up in lights, added humor and heat, and let the characters run wild.

Because it is the season of giving (and also because I am an author), Cougar’s Christmas is on sale for 99c right now.

So if you: