Deck the Halls with . . . this year’s fashions? Welcome Back Guest Catriona McPherson

I always know that when I see an email with a post from Catriona that I’m going to have a laugh and this one was no different! Catrionia is here to talk Christmas and the sixth book in her Last Ditch Motel series, Hop Scot.

Catriona: All of the books in the Last Ditch Motel series start on a holiday: July 4^th, Halloween, Valentine’s Day, Friday 13^th March 2020 (bit of a swerve there), Thanksgiving, and now in HOP SCOT, Book 6, Christmas! Lexy and the rest of the Ditchers leave California and hop (gerrit?) over to Scotland for the holidays. It was a joy to write, more or less in real time since I finished the first draft on the 18^th of December and edited it starting in January.

I love Christmas – the food, the traditions, the music, the traditions, the twinkling lights and flickering candles and traditions – so it always amazes me that there are people in the world who love Christmas as their chance for innovation and change.

After end of summer every year, flipping through magazines at a busy check-out or clicking when you should be working (we all do it), you’re sure to find words like these:

• Looking to update your festive style?
• Excited for the design-forward trends of the year?
• Tired of the same old Christmas look?

From me, the answer is a resounding NO. Flip a bit further in the same magazines or click on a different link, and they’re at the food!

• Try an easy twist on the classics this year
• 25 ways to re-invent your Christmas menu
• Tweak that turkey and spruce up the sprouts (I made this one up)

Again, my answer is “No, thank you” and I don’t mean the thank you. Christmas dinner is a meal we only eat once a year. (British Christmas dinner is more or less the same as US Thanksgiving dinner as far as its iconic status goes. There are differences in the actual menus of the two meals. Marshmallows spring to mind.) Anyway, once a year, right? So how tired can you get of it?

Same with the decorations. The house looks how it looks for eleven months and we cope. How can it be the one-month-long extra sparkles that we can’t bear to see again?

Not me. I’ll be decorating my house with the stuff I started collecting in the mid-80s when I got my first flat, and have kept adding to – but not subtracting from – ever since. Part of the joy of the season for me is unwrapping those faded bits of newspaper from the Thatcher years and reuniting with baubles, Santas, fairies and angels. The yellow cab we bought in New York in 2003, the glittery “big fork and spoon” that matches the actual “big fork and spoon” that we’ve got in the kitchen like Frank and Marie off Everybody Loves Raymond, because it’s funny. The candy cane that our niece knitted at Brownies, that’s strung the wrong way up, so it looks like a hockey stick, because Scottish kids then didn’t know what candy canes were . . .

And on top of the living room tree, the fairy from my childhood: in all her Bakelite and cardboard glory. She’s got extra purple glitter that one of my sisters added in the 70s and there’s a lot of sticky tape holding her together. But she’ll always be the boss of my main Christmas tree. I have another tree in the bedroom, because I spend so much time reading in bed at Christmas and on the top of that is a rescue angel. We found her at a yard sale, discarded, priced $1. She deserved better. And now she’s got it. As long as I can lift my arm high enough, there she will stay.

Just for a laugh, though, I did a bit of research on this year’s hottest trends in Christmas décor. Here’s what’s popping for 2023.

“Nature”: I read an article advising that pine cones and evergreen branches are in this year. Well, you don’t say! Who’d have thought it?

“Pink”. Maybe because of Barbie, pink is supposedly huge for Christmas this year, only it’s blush pink paired with bronze, not the eyeball-shredding Barbie pink. I wonder what Oppenheimer-themed Christmas decorations would look like . . .

“Minimalism”. They keep trying with his, don’t they? Surely it never works. Certainly it will never work on me. Maximalism is my watchword. Far too much is almost enough and more is more.

But, gentle reader, if you have a minimalist aesthetic, or are going pink for this year, or if you change your décor every December, I would love to hear from you. Do you mix it up? Do you try new recipes? And what do you put on top of your Christmas tree?

Bio:

Catriona McPherson (she/her) was born in Scotland and immigrated to the US in 2010. She writes preposterous 1930s private detective stories, realistic 1940s amateur sleuth stories, and contemporary psychological standalones. These are all set in Scotland with a lot of Scottish weather. She also writes  modern comedies about the Last Ditch Motel in a “fictional” college town in Northern California. HOP SCOT is number six in the series. Catriona’s books have won or been shortlisted for the Edgar, the Anthony, the Agatha, the Lefty, the Macavity, the Mary Higgins Clark award and the UK Ellery Queen Dagger. She is a proud lifetime member and former national president of Sisters in Crime.  www.catrionamcpherson.com