Every holiday season reminds me that family gatherings exist for two reasons: food, and unintentionally gifting writers enough story material to last until next December (ha). But seriously, if you’re a writer attending a holiday gathering and you aren’t mentally filing material away for your next book, are you even doing the holidays right?  

​The holiday season has a way of heightening everything—joy, nostalgia, tension, longing, unresolved conflict, even the quiet griefs that typically stay tucked beneath the routines of daily life. Whether you’re writing fiction or memoir, December’s sparkle-and-shadow combination offers an irresistible creative entry point into family drama. People are gathering. Traditions return. Old wounds test their bandages. And amid the glow of twinkle lights, characters (including ourselves) often reveal who they are with startling clarity.

Magical realism has long held a shimmering corner of the literary world—a place where wonder slips quietly into the everyday, and where the impossible is treated not as spectacle but as truth. Writers who step into this space discover a genre that invites subtlety, metaphor, cultural resonance, and emotional depth. It’s a space where magic isn’t a disruption but a companion; where characters don’t gasp when miracles occur, because the world has always held more beneath its surface than logic can explain.