What exactly is a traditional Christmas? It’s tricky to say, right? My best friend and I always joke that once we do something twice, it’s a tradition. But at this time of year, there’s just so many layers of tradition buried beneath the avalanche of fake snow that it’s hard to know when anything began.

On top, there’s the stuff we’ve identified as adults we love about the holidays. Personally this is the traditional time for me to break out the Christmas blend tea, my sheepskin slippers, and to watch the television stars of yesteryear – hello Jennie Garth! – rock seasonal knitwear and permanently unbuttoned coats in heart-warming holiday romances. There’s the family traditions from our childhood. Advent will always be associated for me with my sister and I competing over who could eat our post-dinner After Eight the slowest (she won). Then there’s those broader cultural traditions like how I wait until American Thanksgiving is over for my first listen of ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You’. I grew up mostly in the States and can still remember driving home from the enormous turkey meal at my aunts, watching all the neighbours getting to work stringing up their lights to signal the start of the festive season.

So that’s our beloved individual traditions. But what about Christmastime? Our holidays are also very much a commercially-curated experience. Naturally, this privileges European experiences in the boomtime economy of 20th century United States. But beneath the electric-bill busting American brand of the holiday, there is an earlier, but still highly commercialised tradition. Yep, the traditions that loom the largest in the smorgasbord of festive options has got to be those we get from the Victorians. Let’s break it down like your least favourite colleague’s gym workout:

Christmas pudding? Victorians. Christmas cards? Victorians. Santa Claus? Okay, that was Coca-Cola in collaboration with the Victorians. But don’t give the credit for the Christmas tree to the Germans, cause it’s the Victorians who hauled that candlelit fire hazard into our homes. What about the very idea of Christmas as a charitable, family-oriented holiday? Victorians. Queen Victoria and Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol specifically. And while nineteenth-century ideas of charity in the form of a roast goose for the deserving poor is seriously outdated – it’s all about mutual assistance in 2022, my dears – the feel-good community-focused vibe still tracks. So I couldn’t resist returning to this gaslit Christmas era and diving headlong into all the iconic experiences of the season for my holiday novella series.

For the third and final book of my Christmas Masquerade series, I’ve whisked my MCs – all three of them! – off to the Devonshire coast. Having done a London Christmas with its ice skating in Regent’s Park in Book 1, and a Highland Christmas with its New Year’s bonfires in Book 2, I really wanted to set Book 3 somewhere that brought a new set of holiday traditions into play. Very literally. From indoor games like Blindman’s Bluff to outdoor pursuits like horse riding, I wanted play to be at the heart of this holiday. It’s also the largest family celebration I’ve attempted with a huge extended family all descending on a manor house for a country Christmas along with our citified chaperones. I had great fun walking them all down to a seaside teashop and leading them through uncoordinated carolling. The more the merrier was my motto while writing this book.

Appropriately enough, this is also my first book with three main characters. The vee-poly romance blossoms like a Christmas rose between my lovely ice queen Candida (what better time of year to thaw?) and her two love interests. Sophie, an avowed Horse Girl, is contending with both her huge, nosy family and the return of her adolescent crush, Candida. While Broderick, Candida’s elegant ex-lover, hates holiday jollity and has ventured outside London only in hopes of winning back the woman he loves. Naturally, I had great fun dragging him into the countryside holiday antics!

I hope readers enjoy this holiday excursion to the gaslit Christmastime era with all the trimming I could find while also extending these traditions to include a queer love story.

Happy holiday reading!

Love Meg xx