Elisabeth Grace Foley

Historical Fiction Author

Three Characters in Search of a Christmas Tree

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Way back in the murky mists of time—that is to say, in my 2009 NaNoWriMo draft of what eventually became Land of Hills and Valleys—there were some unfinished Christmas scenes, including one where several characters went to cut down a Christmas tree. Since it didn’t advance the story at all, I didn’t include it in the rewritten version of the manuscript. This month, I thought it might be fun to dig out that unused scene and polish it up enough to share as an “outtake.” It wasn’t exactly good enough for that (I must say, it’s reassuring to see how much my writing has improved in twelve years), but I ended up taking the idea and a few lines from the original scene and wrote a couple of pages based off it.

It’s fairly different from the fragment in the old draft—Tony was originally in the scene too, and I decided to leave out some dialogue which I’d repurposed for a different scene in the finished novel. Chronologically, this would come around the beginning of Chapter 12 in Land of Hills and Valleys, and there are no spoilers for the novel in it. As far as story goes, it’s pure and total fluff, but I thought you might enjoy it:

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As Christmas drew closer I found myself harboring a nonsensical but potent longing: I wanted a Christmas tree. It didn’t make any sense, since I’d been invited to celebrate with the Stevensons. I was the only person in the house; there wouldn’t be anyone else to open gifts beside it on Christmas morning—no family to gather around it. But I wanted one all the same. I kept remembering how the Drapers’ big staid brick house, never very homelike at most times, seemed lit up by the big glowing tree in their parlor every December, and how it lent an extra touch of life and brightness to the faces and voices of the friends and relatives who gathered however briefly about it. Then I would look around the weather-beaten little ranch house and find it a bit bare and lonely on the short winter afternoons, marooned amid a white sea of great sweeping snowdrifts. A tree of any kind would make it seem more like a home.

I couldn’t go and cut one down by myself, but I still couldn’t bring myself to ask any of my ranch hands, even—or perhaps especially?—Ray. I was sure I’d see a smile or the twinkle of an eye that was entirely obliging but indulgent—I couldn’t bear to have anyone else see my silly little dream for exactly what it was.

I stalled self-consciously until we were into the week before Christmas, and then finally decided to ask Lane. I knew that even if he thought I was silly he would try not to show it, and would probably end up convincing himself that it made perfect sense. [Read more…]

Spirit of ’76

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Over the last few years, I’ve sensed a subtle difference in the way much of America celebrates the 4th of July—a difference from the way it was a hundred, fifty, even twenty years ago. Today the main components of Independence Day celebration seem to be an attitude of “yay America is awesome” plus indiscriminate praise of everything military, past or present. There’s a strong flavor of “we” and “us” about the celebrations…a sense that we’re awesome just because we’re here, without much thought of how we happened to get here.

I feel that we’ve lost sight of the fact that our national holiday was originally intended to commemorate a specific occasion, and not just…all about us. That we’re meant to be remembering something that, you know, somebody else did. A momentous step that someone else took. We’d do well to readjust our focus so that we’re not merely cheering the fact that we exist, but acknowledging that, like it or not, we are where we are and what we are because we stand on the achievements of past generations.

And you know, if you want to celebrate military heroes, then for today let it be the soldiers of the Revolution. We do actually have other holidays dedicated to the veterans and the fallen of other wars—the Fourth ought to belong in greatest part to the boys of ’76. And ’77. And all the way through to ’83. For after all, every American can talk glibly of George Washington and Paul Revere and Bunker Hill and Valley Forge and Yorktown; but how often do we take a day, or even just a few minutes, to consider what the War of Independence meant in practical experience to the lives of the rank-and-file privates who marched and fought in the Continental Army? Especially since, for most of us, they were our very own direct ancestors.

I’ve stood on a quiet hilltop beside a replica cannon and looked down on a river that now has an asphalt highway running alongside it, and strained my imagination perceptibly trying to picture what it was like with earthworks thrown up along the brow of the hill. I’ve walked a paved path through a wood and tried to imagine it filled with the smoke from the long rifles of buckskin-clad sharpshooters who helped turn the tide in the battle of Saratoga. It’s not so easy to do. We’re so darn civilized, you know. We know that just down the road is an intersection with a gas station and traffic lights and convenience store and all the other strands of the safety net of modern civilization that makes us feel so sure of ourselves. It’s not so easy now for us to imagine what it would be like to be a man or woman living on an isolated farm tucked among the hills, knowing there were troops encamped just over the ridge and that any moment there might be a bloody battle fought in your cornfield and your dooryard.

The closest I’ve ever come, I think—ironically—is standing and watching a fireworks show, hearing the loudest explosions rebound off nearby hills and buildings and feeling the concussion rattle in my chest, and thinking: is this what cannon fire is like?

Our traditions have taken shape over the years so that for most of us, celebrating involves picnic food and things that go pop and bang. And there’s nothing wrong with that a-tall. (I lean towards potato salad myself.) Picnic and have fun and enjoy the holiday. But just pause for a moment, between sparklers, and think back to your great-grandfather-times-ten tramping down a dusty road in worn-out shoes with a musket on his shoulder. Think for a moment, and wonder.

Happy Independence Day!

photo: Saratoga National Battlefield, taken by myself

December Snippets

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A surprise holiday post! I am on Internet vacation this week. But it so happens that in the week leading up to Christmas, I wrote most of a short Christmas story (which didn’t turn out as short as I expected, incidentally), to which I’ve been trying to write an ending in my spare time this week. I very often get the impulse to write something Christmasy at this time of year! So I thought I’d share a few bits for December’s Snippets of Story. These are all from the same story, which is set in the 1930s; its working title is “Some Christmas Camouflage.”

Kitty went to answer [the door], and found Professor Alden, looking rather like a snow-frosted barber pole in the long striped scarf that had wound itself several times around him with the wind.

He flicked over another page idly, with the pardonable air of world-weariness acquired over years of endeavoring to instill an appreciation for the past in endless successions of young people interested only in the present and their own part in the present.

But Wesley did not at once notice [the room’s] plainness nor the sparseness of the furniture, and that was perhaps because the light from the single lamp fell in such a way that it struck the gold hair of the girl sitting on the sofa, and in so doing seemed to fill the room with an aura of richness.

The icy fire-escape seemed to creak and rattle as if with annoyance on his way down, where it had been a willing conspirator on the way up.

As Wesley trudged back through the streets toward the college with his hands in his coat pockets, the street lamps, the lights in other windows, the faint moonlight now tinting the dark-blue sky all seemed cold and mocking lights, which before had been laughing and cheerful.
 

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