Top 5 Winter Holiday Rituals with Joe Cosentino

What are my five favorite winter holiday rituals to recommend to you? 

1. Glide along with the music at an outdoor ice skating rink. If you skate like an intoxicated duck (like me), sit on a bench next to the fire pit and enjoy some hot apple cider and roasted chestnuts with your special someone.

2. Find a beautifully painted and lit carousel. Straddle a horse and bob up and down to the tune of famous carols. If you can’t mount a horse, sit on a bench and wave like a queen (no pun intended).

3. Don’t forget the department stores! Start out by ogling the creative window displays. Enjoy the carolers dressed in Victorian garb serenading you as you enter. Gasp at the beautifully decorated holiday trees. Then max out your credit cards buying expensive gifts. Finally, go home and play Scrooge and Marley, Santa and his favorite Elf, or the Nutcracker and the Mouse King with your special someone.

4. Go on a Victorian holiday house tour enjoying the fireplace mantels and antique furnishings brimming with Christmas stockings, gingerbread houses, and hand-carved ornaments. Once outside, take a one-horse open sleigh ride under a thick blanket, and then make a snowman dressed like a GQ model. And don’t forget to invite the cutest person on your tour under the mistletoe in the gazebo!

5. If you’re so inclined, attend an open and affirming church service. Hear the hymns accompanied by the antique pipe organ, and gaze at the gorgeous stained-glass windows. Take in the message of social justice, equality, and radical hospitality for all. If you’re like me, you’ll wonder how that message of servitude to all has been turned by conservatives into a political message of hate, persecution, and exclusion.

What’s your favorite winter holiday ritual? Post a comment below (in the Facebook group). The one that lights the star on our holiday tree will win a gift audiobook of my e-book, A Home for the Holidays, the first Bobby and Paolo story, performed by Joel Leslie, published by Dreamspinner Press.

And don’t miss my just released e-book, A Perfect Gift, the second Bobby and Paolo holiday story, published by Dreamspinner Press! Happy holidays! Joe Cosentino http://www.JoeCosentino.weebly.com