What makes holiday fiction work? (Or does it not?)

Well, the season is upon us. So, I guess we should tackle a more seasonal theme for this new roundtable. We're going to talk about holiday-themed fiction, and why it works (or doesn't).

There's a long tradition of holiday-themed (particularly Christmas) stories and novels. Is that a theme you've covered in your work and to what degree? Whole novels? More of a setting?

Mari Hersh-Tudor: I was instrumental in developing the basis of a holiday urban fantasy anthology involving “maximum explicit spice” that we self-pubbed a few years back. The combination of subjects was… bracing.

Selah Janel: I’ve written a magic realism/faerie-based novella called Holly and Ivy, as well as a Christmas horror/zombie short called Candles. They’re very different stories centered around different aspects of the season.

Marian Allen: I wrote stories for Christmas anthologies. One was a fantasy set at the turning of the season (not Christmas, per se). One was a comic Sci-Fi set on another planet during the Anti-Hot Solemnities, but that was sort of Christmas, since it featured a librarian of a Living Library of people native to the planet who are so obsessed with Earth literature they memorize texts (like in F451), and a Compendium of Christmas stories always goes to her family's Solemnities with her. One was a mystery that just happened to be set during the holidays, and my current WIP, Pickle in a Pear Tree, is set during Christmas and revolves, in part, around a family tradition. 

Bobby Nash: Not really. I mean, I’ve set stories during holidays, but I’ve not intentionally written a “Christmas” story. Every year I think I should, but that usually happens in December so I tell myself I’ll do it next year. Then next year arrives and I repeat the process.

Brian K Morris: My first paperback novel release was Santastein: The Post-Holiday Prometheus. It was originally a ten-minute stage play script that never was picked up, due to its irreverence, and expanded into novel form. I've never visited the holiday motif since.

Kay Iscah: Not yet, though the next book I have coming out should establish major festivals in the fantasy setting. There's a quick reference to the Harvest Festival in Seventh Night, but it's not really explored beyond setting up a timeline. For the next story, getting to go to the Winter Feast does become a plot point and takes up two chapters and sets up some class contrast, Kaleb's desire to be loved and recognized, and plot points for the murder mystery towards the end.

Sean Taylor: Funnily enough, the only times I used the holidays as a theme for my stories was during my time as a staff writer for Cyber Age Adventures/iHero Entertainment, and then because we would do themed stories for various holidays and for December and October. Some of those remain my favorite stories. I tended to use them as a setting more than a plot point, although sometimes I loved to mingle the two. 

Ian Brazee-Cannon: I have written one holiday story and it uses Christmas folklore from around the world, avoiding any of the modern Christmas traditions, not mentioning Christmas, Christ, or Santa at all.

Does holiday-themed writing work equally well in all genres or are there genres you feel are better suited to the familial/celebratory themes? Or are the negative feelings drudged up by the holiday loneliness/greed/selfishness equally powerful themes that can make for great holiday fiction?

Darin Kennedy: My book, Carol, is Scrooge meets Mean Girls, a modern date, an adult adaptation of the Dickens classic.

For this particular book, the fantasy/ghost story genre is pretty much established for me.

Since this is such a famous story of redemption, I tried to lean fully into that.

Brian K Morris: Since I feel there are very few genres or tropes that can't fit into the holiday spirit, with the exception of hate. Not hate for the holiday itself, which I can understand (and I fell prey to it due to my mother dying around that time), but hate for other beings. I mean Scrooge hated Christmas and had a valid (to him) reason, but he changed his mind.

Kay Iscah: I think it's less an issue of genre and more an issue of do you actually have anything worth saying about the holiday or does it serve a purpose in the story. I doubt anyone would think of The Fugitive as a St. Patrick's Day story, but the parade serves a story function in the film. A Christmas Carol is an exploration of the holiday but also universal themes like greed vs. generosity and human connection vs. isolation.

The problem with most Christmas films is that they're vapid. Many will try to tack on a feel good message, but if it feels tacked on, it's a failing of the narrative. I loathe A Christmas Story; however, I think many people relate to it because it does reflect the sort of messy contrast between what we would like Christmas to be and how it actually is for many people.

Bobby Nash: All of the above, I suppose. Most holiday fare tends to have a happy ending, but there’s nothing that says a downer couldn’t be just as valid of a holiday story. It all depends on the story and how it’s told.

Sean Taylor: I think it can work well in any genre. We seen it in fables like "Little Match Girl" and literary tales like "The Gift of the Magi." I think though that it has almost been taken over by two genres almost to the exclusion of others. One is the very obvious romance genre, as seen in the seasonal Harlequin and Harlequin-adjacent displays set up in bookstore this time of year. The other is the flip side of the coin, that of ironic horror, usually featuring a zombie Santa or another Krampus story. Not that those aren't fantastic uses; I'd just love to see more holiday-themed crime stories and thrillers. 

Mari Hersh-Tudor: I don’t do sappy. I can’t. It’s not real, which may be the entire point for some, and that’s okay. It’s just not my cup of mead. I like to turn things upside down to provide a different perspective. And I’m always funny, even if grimly.

Selah Janel: Holiday fiction *can* be done in all genres, but isn’t necessarily easy to pull off in all genres. It’s really easy for Christmas horror to come off as schlocky, and I think sometimes inspirational or romance stories can be a little too easy in terms of the holiday season being the resolution for characters’ problems. Some people are happy with that, though, so I think everything probably has an audience of some sort.

I think people forget that Christmas is a very nuanced season. Not everyone is happy, or there’s stress in the forced happiness. Likewise, being with loved ones can be the bright spot in otherwise terrible situations.

In Holly and Ivy, I lightly use some romance tropes to get the plot going, but it becomes a story about finding oneself, making tough decisions, and loss during a celebratory time. There are happy and sad events for Holly, just like there are for so many people. Her success and happiness at the end isn’t free. I took some influence from Hans Christian Andersen’s story "The Fir Tree," and usually describe it as my book for people with complicated feelings about Christmas.

Candles, while extremely dark with a bleak ending, focuses on family and found family struggling to do what they can to celebrate the holiday during the zombie apocalypse. They lean into comforting traditions, such as they are. While not really riffing off "Gift of the Magi" exactly, it leans into the theme of a mother doing what she can to give the gift she feels would benefit her loved ones during a horrific time. I would hope people can find some connection with both stories.

How do you walk the line between sappy and serious when you write with a holiday theme? How do you avoid the sugar-sweet nostalgia or do you just go whole hog and embrace it?

George Tackes: When the story is more than just a story during Christmas. Could it be set at any other time without alterations?

Marian Allen: One avoids sappiness by remembering that no true human feeling is pure: There is always a dot of yin in our yang and vice versa.

Selah Janel: I typically need to determine the genre, what my plot is, and how my characters relate to the holidays. Once I determine those, I know how much to lean in. Since there are so many aspects to the season, trying to embrace it all is to difficult and loses the point of the story for me. The nostalgia and saccharine have to support the other elements, either by enhancing or subverting. I try to go off things I know I or others connect with so I can really use them well, and not try to overload a story with a ton of set dressing. Otherwis,e you have a little bit of cake with a ton of icing.

Kay Iscah: Hallmark has ruined Christmas for me, so I have to comment on this one as an outsider. I do appreciate the appeal of a channel with minimal violence and no foul language or sex. The problem is my mom leaves it on almost constantly since the pandemic, and when you can't eat or go to the bathroom without a Hallmark Christmas movie playing in the background, it does start wearing on your soul.

There are a few gems in the mix. But in general, Hallmark Christmas is a soulless worship of materialism. It tries very, very hard to romanticize how important the decorations are, and that you're some kind of monster if you don't get a live tree or bake fresh cookies. But it is not interested in exploring any deeper themes than how it's bad to ruin other people's fun, which is expressed by how much they over-decorate their house. It's particularly grating when they pretend to give their heroines financial problems while having them in million-dollar houses with thousands of dollars in decorations and never having to miss activities for want of funds. I remember one Hallmark film that actually tackled poverty at Christmas in a somewhat believable way, but it was one in a sea of what is rapidly becoming hundreds.

And it's extra sad, because when I was a kid. "Hallmark Presents" were special movies and usually pretty good. When they became a channel, quantity over quality became the focus.

I can definitely see the lure of wanting to capture that Christmas magic, but I think if you stay on a very surface level, the lack of real heart shows. The good, classic Christmas stories touch on some deeper universal theme and what makes them so magical is partly that contrast between despair and hope with hope coming out the victor. If your heroine is a spoiled brat who everyone loves and always gets her way and never faces a problem that can't be fixed with a few phone calls, it's hard to feel much victory in her achievement. And it's a little hard to back this one with examples because these films all start running together after a while.

I certainly think there is a place for gentler and smaller-scale stories. But while stakes can be small, they need to also feel real and should matter to the story, and in some of the best Christmas stories the characters win by letting go of the material expectations. So stories that double down on everything being about the presents and the decorations and the festivals often come off as anti-moral and having missed the whole point. They try to remind us of better stories, but fail to be good stories themselves.

There's nothing wrong with a story highlighting a functional family or something simple and heartwarming. There is something wrong with celebrating materialism and rewarding bad behavior in a narrative, particularly when it's a pattern.

Bobby Nash: It depends on who you’re writing it for, I’d say. Is the publisher looking for sappy? Serious? Nostalgic? Or something else? What are your readers looking for? What are you, as the writer, trying to get across?

Brian K Morris: I guess I lack the ability to wrap really, really sappy stuff. My inherent cynicism and irreverence toward convention won't allow me to write anything grim without poking fun at it, or ridiculing it. I'd rather embrace the spirit of the holiday of peace and showing love and compassion for others.

Mari Hersh-Tudor: Emotions are universal. Exploring them through the lens of a holiday gives an extra dimension and a chance to get some universal truths.

Sean Taylor: While I can write sappy without too many problems, it almost always ends up cut from the file or balled up and thrown into a trash can. It's almost like I have to get the sappy out of my system first to find the better, more effective use of nostalgia for my admittedly more bittersweet types of stories.