As you know from previous blogs, I love this time of year! Sharing the love and wonder of the holidays with family and friends is what Christmas is all about for me.

It's also a great time for our Chicken Soup for the Soul team... they started choosing stories for this year's Christmas book, Chicken Soup for the Soul: Time for Christmas in early summer, and are especially thrilled that it's finally time for Christmas!

We can't wait to share these heartwarming and inspirational Christmas stories. They'll leave you glowing in the Christmas spirit!

Here's a sneak peek of one of our favorite stories... spoiler alert, there is a Christmas miracle!

In her story, "Gramma's Gift," Jamie Cahill talks about her grandmother, who loved Christmas and shared many traditions with her grandchildren and then her great-grandchildren, Jamie’s three kids. The kids would snuggle in their great-grandmother’s lap as she read them the same Christmas stories she had read to Jamie.

Then, Jamie’s grandmother had a stroke at age ninety-seven. Jamie and her oldest child drove from Connecticut to Pennsylvania to see her and say their goodbyes. During the drive they talked about life and death, and Jamie shared some of the Chicken Soup for the Soul stories that she’d read from people who believe that our spirits carry on and are still present after death.

Although Gramma couldn’t speak, Jamie’s daughter Lucie talked to her and said, “Send us a sign when you’re gone, Gramma, a sign that you’re with us.”
Jamie says, “Months went by, and one day Lucie asked me if I’d seen any signs from Gramma. No, I hadn’t seen any signs. I wondered if I should have told her those angel stories and created those expectations. Now she was waiting for a sign, in the literal way that a teenager would.”

Ten months after Gramma died, the next Christmas season arrived. It felt different without Gramma there. But Jamie still had a good time and on Christmas Eve, she hosted 30 people for dinner. Christmas morning, she was exhausted. After all the gifts were unwrapped, her husband took the kids to his parents nearby to see their cousins and open more gifts. Jamie took a quiet walk and thought about her missing grandmother, and then brought in the mail from the day before.

The top piece of mail on a big stack of cards was an envelope addressed in her grandmother’s distinctive script. Jamie ripped open the card. She says, “It was Gramma’s hand-painted Christmas card, a lovely watercolor she did every year:

Dearest Jamie, Tom, Lucie, Emmett and Clara,
To all 5 of you—
What a precious family! It will be so nice to see you on Christmas. Save a few hugs for me.
Love you,
Gramma

It was her grandmother’s Christmas card from the prior year that had never gotten to them. It had a postmark from a year earlier but Jamie’s grandmother had made a slight mistake in the address. Somehow, it arrived on Christmas Eve a year later, ten months after Gramma’s death, right when Jamie and her family really needed a little Christmas miracle—a holiday hello from Gramma!


Warm wishes for a happy holiday season!


Amy Newmark