7 Must-Read Holiday Blogs #7

​7. The Real Magic

When invited to contribute to the 7 Blogs series, I considered memories, humorous anecdotes, and any number of other ideas. What came to me instead was a passage from the novel I’m currently writing. As Christmas Eve is nearly upon us, it seems especially apropos. I hope it touches you.
 
"He reached down to the bottom of the bed and felt around in the darkness until he encountered the filled stocking he knew his father had left there. Then he reached over to his brother's side of the bed and located his stocking, reassuring himself that one was no bigger than the other.
He knew what was in there. The sole bulged with the inevitable apple and orange. In the heel he could make out the unmistakable shape of a pink sugar mouse, that little jaw breaker which only seemed to appear in the shops at this time of year. There would be a handkerchief, or something equally useless, then something that felt like a pencil case, or perhaps one of the packets of Edinburgh rock his mother had brought with her on her last trip home from the hospital. At the top of the stocking would be the usual chocolate hollow Santa Claus.
Individually there wasn't a lot there on which to base the special magic of Christmas Eve. Collectively the filled stocking was the manifestation of the season, a little sack of wondrous delights that had materialised out of the darkness of the night before Christmas. He knew the only way to preserve the magic was to leave the stocking untouched. He knew the true essence of Christmas lay in its anticipation. Somewhere in the precious darkness of Christmas Eve, when the stocking at the bottom of the bed had not yet been explored, and the presents under the tree had still to be opened. When the carol singers still sang about the glorious imminence of Christ's birth, before he had begun his journey to the cross. 
Somewhere in there lay the real magic of Christmas."

---

​
Bestselling Author Bob Atkinson writes time-travel/alternate reality novels set in the magical Scottish Highlands he calls home. His first two books, The Last Sunset and its sequel Red Sky in the Morning, predict a very different America, had the Scots beaten off the English in a great deciding battle.


​Contact Bob:
Facebook Author Page
Twitter
Goodreads
Website  

---

Read Blog 1