Tabby Winslow, candlemaker and psychic, from In the Wick of Time, a Magic Candle Shop mystery, is visiting Ascroft, eh? today to share her dilemma about the holidays.

Welcome, Tabby. I’ll turn the floor over to you –

As a shopkeeper, I understand the value of decorating for the holidays. The themed décor draws customers into the shop, and that’s good for business. As for which holiday is my favorite, it is hard to say. There are candles and scents for holidays and every days.

For New Year’s our displays are mostly blue and white with crisp linen scents in our custom-crafted candles and soaps. Those give way to the reds and blacks of Valentine’s Day, with chocolate scents and heart-shaped soaps, followed by Irish green everything, leprechauns and green candles with a brisk scent blend of sea and hills. (We own two heavy leprechauns, one is named Rip and the other Rap, though I never asked Mom why.) Next come the pastels of Easter along with sunrises, eggs, daisies, bunnies, and candles with the scents of sugary delights.

Graduation in late May to mid-June isn’t a big deal in our shop, but we do add some mitered hats and fake diplomas for our window display, along with candles with exotic scents of faraway places. Summertime décor is easy with batik fabrics, sun hats, candles with blends of coconut and citrus scents, and loads of ferns. We do a jam-up business anytime hurricanes come within a hundred miles of our shore, and pillar candles fly out of the shop.

With September we use an apple theme in our products and cider scents, along with Sage’s autumn-colored mums. October is always colored leaves everywhere, with woody aromas in the candles. As Halloween approaches, we break out strings of orange lights, fill the shop with scented brooms, skeletons, black cat statuettes, and so much more. We liter the front window display with candy corn around a kettle of candles.

November is all about rubber turkeys and Thanksgiving, with candle scents of pumpkin and spice. December is tricky because there are so many holidays. We capture them all with menorahs for Hanukkah; for Winter Solstice we feature our custom lanterns with white and blue candles and keep a pot of warm cider brewing for our customers; we decorate a fake tree for Christmas along with advent candles and a blend of peppermint and evergreen scents; and lastly, we have kinara candleholders along with red, green, and black candles and baking scents for Kwanzaa.

Since we’re in mid-December now, our shop smells amazing everywhere you turn. I love that this month has candles for every celebration. It’s been a tradition for many families of Savannah to shop for their holiday candles here, which is why we make over a third of our yearly income in December. That’s great for our bottom line, but there are so many extra things to do and places to be in December. I always feel like I need a vacation when January rolls around!

This year, my twin sister Sage is involved in the Luminary Candlelight celebration on the last Saturday before December 25. Luminaries, or luminaria depending on where you live, are votives nested in sand inside paper lunch bags. They’re spaced equidistantly apart, about a yard, give or take. The luminary display along the waterfront is wondrous, and the soft glow of candles adds the perfect touch to the holidays. I can’t wait to see it again this year.

My family doesn’t exchange gifts because we’re not any given religion. Mom always put a lot of emphasis on the Winter Solstice, but to her that meant hiking in the woods at night with lanterns. Not my cup of tea. We don’t have outsiders over for a celebratory meal either-just family. In past years that meant Mom, Auntie O, Sage, and me for our holiday feast. This will be our first December without Mom or Auntie O, and our first December with Quig, my boyfriend, though that term doesn’t begin to describe how deeply I felt about him.

And therein lay the rub. I didn’t know what holiday traditions he observes. I didn’t know if he wanted to exchange gifts, and I didn’t want to be caught shorthanded if he gave me a gift. Try as I might, I can’t come up with a gift idea to suit him. He has two passions in life. His career as Medical Examiner and me. Sage said I should buy him racy lingerie that fit me. I waffled on that so long, I eventually decided against it.

Quig is my first boyfriend. My first love, though we have barely exchanged those heartstring words. It’s all so new and shiny that I don’t want to over define our relationship and suck all the magic out of it. So now I’m screwing up my courage to ask him his holiday traditions. Hopefully, my lack of family traditions should be a bonus as that leaves me free to celebrate however he sees fit.

Tell me friends, how would you approach this sticky wicket?

Thank you for sharing this with us, Tabby, and good luck with In the Wick of Time, a Magic Candle Shop mystery. Maybe our readers can offer you some suggestions to help you out with your dilemma.

Readers can learn more about Tabby and her author, Valona Jones by visiting the author’s website and. her Facebook, Goodreads and Bookbub pages.

The book is available online at the following retailers: 

Amazon – B&N – Kobo – BookShop.org

About Valona Jones: Valona is also known as Maggie Toussaint, and writes paranormal cozy mysteries set in coastal Georgia. A former scientist, she’s drawn to the study of personal energy. She sharpened her people-watching skills as a lifelong introvert and had a bank vault of personal observations when she began to write fiction. Her newest release is In The Wick of Time, book 2 in the A Magic Candle Shop Mystery, preceded by Snuffed Out, which released Jan. 2023. She’s a member of Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime with more than twenty-five published works of fiction. She lives in coastal Georgia, where she’s seen time and tide wait for no one.