Hey, it’s Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul. Christmas is just about here, but I know I’m already looking forward to what’s coming in the new year as well. We ended our holiday book, Chicken Soup for the Soul: Tales of Christmas, with a few New Year’s stories and I’m going to share a couple of them with you today, about traditions you might want to start for yourself.

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Hey, it’s Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul. Today’s episode is all about naughty and nice as we head into the final days before Christmas. I’ve got two very funny stories to share today, one about a grandma ingesting stuffing made with a very special herb that was supposed to be just for the twenty-somethings at their family dinner, and one about taking a Christmas card photo in a very unauthorized location. Let’s start with that one.

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Hey, it’s Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul. I don’t know about you, but I have to say that some of my favorite holiday stories are about the various disasters that have befallen our family events—whether it was a totally raw turkey, or a power failure on Christmas Eve, or an easy to assemble gift that was anything but. Then of course there’s the golden retriever eating all the dessert while everyone’s in another room, or the natural tree that came complete with natural bugs, or the gift forgotten in the back of a closet. Or the time that I wrote “Mom” on the gift list for my children, then shared it with my mother-in-law and she thought “Mom” was her, not my mother, so the kids got two of everything.

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Hey, it’s Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul. You know, Christmas is often a time of reflection and a time for remembering the family members who are no longer with us, and that’s hard. But there are so many amazing memories of those people as well, and we carry those with us into our holiday celebrations. My mother died a few days after Christmas seven years ago, so the last time I saw her before she was hospitalized was at my Christmas Eve party. She had such a good time that she and my father were the last to leave. Every other year they had been the first to leave, so I think that somehow, subconsciously, she knew it was her last Christmas. And now I share all her Christmas gifts with my grown children, mostly the excessive number of Christmas ornaments that she loved to give me each year.

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Hey, it’s Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul, and today we’re talking about Christmas. Now, there are times when you’re not expecting the holidays to be as good as they usually are. Maybe you’re home sick, or your family members aren’t available because they’re with in-laws or traveling, or it’s a tough year financially… Well, I know I’ve been through those less than stellar Christmases once in a while. But there are ways to turn things around. And that’s what we’re going to hear about today in two stories from our Magic of Christmas Coloring Book.

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Hey, it’s Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul, and today we’re talking about Christmas. Now you may think it’s all gotten too commercial and it’s all about getting gifts, but that’s not what see at Chicken Soup for the Soul. We see a focus on families getting together, and people enjoying the giving way more than the receiving, and people looking out for others in their communities. And that extends all the way down to the kids, who demonstrate all the attributes you’d want to see as far as generosity and compassion are concerned. So today I’m going to share a couple of stories about the natural generosity of kids at Christmastime, from our brand-new coloring book, Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Magic of Christmas.

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Hey, it’s Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul and today we’re talking about miracles, the ones that seem to abound during the holiday season. We get so many stories about miracles and other unexplained but very cool things like coincidences and answered prayers, and we included a whole chapter of them in our new book Chicken Soup for the Soul: Tales of Christmas. And what could be better than a miracle involving a puppy that was supposed to die on Christmas Eve but ended up thriving?

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Hey, it’s Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul and today we’re talking about the holidays and those special, traditional dishes that families have every year. I know they’re tradition, but has anyone ever asked if anyone actually likes them? It turns out that sometimes people have been polite—for decades—and no one has ever said anything. I know that happened in my family. We had an Italian grandmother who made these awful, dry, weird cookies that we all hated. But Grandamama made them every year, and every year, after she went to bed, we would hide them in the trash compactor. The next morning she would see they were all gone, and of course she would make them again the next year because we all seemed to love them so much.

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Hey, it’s Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul and the race is on. Whether you’re celebrating Christmas or Hanukkah or something else this month, you’re probably working on your gift list. So today I want to share two stories about wonderful gifts that required a lot of imagination and not a lot of money.

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Hey, it’s Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul. Today we’re talking about how to make the perfect Christmas—by accepting imperfection and learning how to enjoy the holidays instead of stressing over every little detail. I’ve always loved that quote about how it matters more who is sitting AROUND the table than what is ON the table, and that applies to all the different aspects of the holidays.

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