Christmas Trees That Didn’t Make The Cut
What follows are the Christmas trees that didn’t make the cut, the details that were not put into the final books. This is sort of like ‘concept art.’
Please note that this content is mostly unedited, so readers can see exactly what I had outlined in my scrap files. There are some redactions where I had brand names.
General items
Original meanings of Christmas
“The real meaning of Christmas is…”
… “Home” (Dasher) - Goldilocks (finding a place that is “just right”)
…”Giving” (Dancer) - Little Red Riding Hood (greedy wolf steals from the grandma of the heroine, learns to GIVE)
…”Charity” (Prancer) - Cinderella
… “True love” (Vixen) - Beauty and the Beast
… “Family” (Comet) - Snow White (she has seven brothers)
… “Friendship” (Cupid) - The Elves and the Shoemaker (but with cookies, and Christmas elves)
… “Forgiveness” (Donner) - The Ugly Ducking (she doesn’t believe she’s beautiful, and he never stood up for her when they were kids)
… “Hope” (Blitzen) - Sleeping Beauty (kiss wakes her up? She cuts herself on an ornament?)
… “Miracles” (Krampus) - The Nutcracker
… “The best gifts come from the heart” (Santa) - The Gift of the Magi
… “Faith in Christmas Magic” (Old Man Winter) - A Christmas Carol
… “Helping others learn the true meaning of Christmas” (Pandora) - The Matchstick Girl (Genderswapped, with Jack “freezing” to “death”)
Author’s note: you can see that a lot of these meanings changed because the fairy tales changed. For example, Cupid Claws and Donner Claws ended up swapping stories. The meanings of Christmas changed to things that had more relevance to the plots of the final books.
Kringle’s Hollow
Town on The Wreath
Has a Bear Claw Bakery
Author’s note: originally, this was the name for the town of The Wreath, to avoid confusion, and then I thought it would be funny if the town, forest, and lake names were confusing.
Christmas magic items
Kringletrees: magical Christmas trees that are perfectly predecorated and grow in the Christmas Tree groves. Only those touched by Christmas magic can see them. To everyone else, they look like normal pine trees. Each tree is predestined for a family, and as it grows, so do the decorations, e.g. the ornaments start as small buds.
Some trees are normal and grown for special occasions, when people need a tree but didn’t need it until after the growing season started. Krampus is a drill sergeant about proper Christmas tree decorating techniques, including tinsel placement, and he loves glitter. “If you don’t have glitter under your nails at the end of the day, you didn’t do a real day of manly work, maggot.”
Poinsettias:
Candy Canes: They are candy sword canes that can be used to fight people. Krampus uses one to stop Hell from taking him back, and to get his fated mate back from hell after demons kidnap her because she made the Naughty List for being too kinky.
The Star: A Christmas tree tripping star, it leads the way back to the North Pole.
Authors note: I obviously did not write the Kringletrees into the books. Instead, Krampus gave the bad boys ornaments. I also did not include scenes where Krampus made people decorate trees. Poinsettias were supposed to be special, but that never made it into the book. Krampus was originally going to use a candy cane as a weapon in his book. I ended up making them like cigarettes for Christmas elves instead. I have no clue what I was going on about regarding ‘the Star’ — I think it must have been something about a tree-topping star instead.
Artifact notes
Santa’s Sleigh: it has sleigh runners that are made of the same metal of Krampus’a chains to allow it light teleportation with help from the elves
Pandora’s “Sleigh”: she jokingly calls her car a “sleigh” throughout the books. In the last book, Santa has it specially fired with hubcaps made of the Krampus chain metal that are in the shape of snowflakes, to allow her to also teleport. She plays music out of this during the delivery runs. He apologizes that she has to do her first run “by herself” but she says she won’t be by herself, because she’ll be with friends (the bears)
Christmas Sacks: bags of holding with a portal built in so that the elves can toss shit into a bag on their end, and it appears in the Christmas sack.
Krampus’s Chains: a chain worn around his neck, it can be turned into any sort of metal chain (including for imprisonment and kink purposes). He uses this to bind the dudes to force them through the portal. He also uses the chain to make the portals initially. Portals can stay up without the chain. The metal from the chains is from an unknown place.
The Jingle Bells: Santa’s bells, they can only be heard by Santa’a Helpers, which includes every hero in the books, and act as a summoning call.
The Nice and Naught Lists: the lists are a set of scrolls. Santa can craft new scrolls. Santa can reenchant scrolls with new names to track, as well as make side by side “Naughty” and “Nice” lists. They don’t have to be scrolls, just things that show info. The NAUGHTY and NICE signs in his office lobby track the hero of each book.
Jack’s Frost: more of an extended motif, instead of tossing pebbles at Pandora’a window, Jack frosts her windows up. He’s done it since they were kids. The prologue for book 12 should feature this as part of a flashback.
Santa’s Hat: a magic hat that allows Santa to control the sleigh.
Pandora’s Hat: a magic hat that allows Pandora to control her sleigh.
Author’s note: some of this stuff made it into the book, but changed. Namely, Pandora doesn’t get her flying SUV until Frosty Claws, and she doesn’t really use it until Miss Claws. Krampus’ chains were going to be used sexually, but that didn’t end up happening. Jingle bells did not become a thing. There were no Naughty and Nice signs in his office.
Elemental magic
Elementals:
- Have an elemental form like those seen in [video games], where they’re a being of elemental power, a la the personification of various weather things
- The elemental form is also an animal, usually one associated with the element, but a contrast can work (e.g. ice lion, fire shark)
- The elemental form has powers that can be used without shifting, but they’re less cool in human form (e.g. Jack can make an ice rose in human form, but to make a garden of ice, he’d need to shift)(this will vary with elemental powers over time, so Jack isn’t as powerful as his pops)
Author’s note: a lot of this changed, namely, not having to be in a shift to use elemental magic.
Reindeer magic
All the reindeer shifters are bear shifters. They have to be to be part of one clan. They’re all grizzlies as well. Their clan is one of the few clans that knows about Christmas Magic and is trusted to keep the secret.
The reindeer shifts are immortal and the bear shift isn’t removed, but, the reindeer shift overpowers it (internal shifting fight scenes) so that the bear can’t come out. The fact a reindeer can beat a bear shows how powerful the shifts are.
The lessons the dudes need to learn is about not blaming their behavior on their shifts, but taking responsibility, and doing better. If they’re still assholes w/o their shifts, they have problems that don’t have to do with their shifts that they need to deal with.
The reindeer shifts also stop the dudes from doing things like pursuing the girls until the time is right (e.g. playboy can’t hang w a girl until he catches feels).
The shifters save the girl from something in each book using their human form, and learn not to just rely on their shift.
The shifters do also have shifter scenes where they defend the girl.
Author’s note: this is all phrased very awkwardly.
By ‘all the reindeer shifters are bear shifters’ I meant that all the shifter heroes from the reindeer books (the first eight books) were going to be werebears. I did not mean that all were-reindeer, everywhere, are werebears.
Most of this content made it into the final product. However, the idea of Christmas magic being kept a secret kind of changed. It doesn’t need to be kept secret because it’s hidden in plain sight. The idea that the humans have to ‘save the girl’ in human form changed to helping the girl out (in most cases — e.g. Kevin helping Stella assemble the gingerbread house kits) because it was about heart over brawn.
Christmas magic
Christmas Magic is its own school of magic
Avoid Bible related stuff
Christmas Magic is about making “dreams come true”, helping the naughty become nice, and about hope and believing in Christmas Magic
Christmas Magic gets more powerful with more good deeds performed
Special magic that can only be performed by members of the Claus family
Claus family adopts children, so there isn’t a current Mrs. Claus, because the current Santa Claus never married
Naughty and Nice alignments. The mark on the chest of the dudes says their current alignment. There is also Santa’s list which is stored on a series of magic scrolls. This can also be scried. It’s a scrying of the heart, rather than the mind.
Giftomancy: conjuring physical goods in wrapped boxes with Christmas wrapping. The gifts are what people want or need or deserve. Gifts are set on conjuring.
Emotional manipulation. Claus auras are strong. They can give people “hope” and “belief” in Christmas
Author’s note: Christmas magic was always meant to be its own school of magic.
I avoided religious content (generally ‘Bible-related stuff’) because Christmas and religion are complicated, and different faiths and folks and cultures celebrate it differently. I wanted my Christmas to be the kind of Christmas anyone could envision celebrating within their own tradition. I also didn’t want to write a book containing religious content and have it be mediocre, because I have respect for that content, so if I can’t write it well, I try not to write it at all.
I did include The Epiphany because of Befana, but I didn’t mention the religious aspect of what that meant.
The idea that Christmas magic could get ‘more powerful’ as a whole was something that changed from being deeds based to being beliefs based.
Christmas magic stopped being a thing only the Claus family could use. The Christmas elves, the various European characters we met in Miss Claws, the demons, they all can use Christmas magic, and arguably, so could the shifters and humans.
I think Santana is the first Claus and was not adopted. He does not have family other than Pandora and his friends.
The Naughty and Nice alignments were a thing. Scrying refers to using an object to figure some shit out, like looking into a crystal ball to predict the future. The idea was that Santana could know if somebody was Naughty or Nice just by thinking about them or touching them. That was just changed to having Santana consult the enchanted lists.
Claus vs. Frost:
Frosts have to do their part to keep the weather cycle going
However, this gets in the way of the Clauses
It’s a free market (Claus) vs. govt (Frost) thing
However, they team up to make miracles happen
It’s usually Jack who teams up with Miss to make miracles happen, e.g. a white Christmas for a proposal
Author’s note: originally, Boreas Winter and Jack Frost shared the same surname, hence the ‘Frost’ family. Originally, Jack and Pandora helped the hero plan proposals, but because many proposals were done just in the nick of time, I changed this to having Jack and Pandora dangle mistletoe, as well as having Pandora supply the engagement rings. Otherwise, how would the heroes get rings? It’s not like Krampus was paying them!
Oh. Pandora wasn’t named at this point, so I put Miss in as a placeholder. She was always Miss Claus. That was a thing from the start. The idea is there is no Mrs. Claus, but there is a Miss Claus.
Book requirements
Christmas tree
- Chopped down by the hero
- Delivered to the heroine who stays in a cabin on the lake near the bakery
- Decorated with lights
- Decorated with ornaments left behind in the winter cabin
- Ornaments include ornaments that are passed down through all the books and left behind for the next girl, for the first 8 books
- Dudes touch the ornaments to get the shift at the start of the book
- Shifts live in the ornaments
- Added to a tree that shows up in one of the last four books, the ornaments aren’t magical in that they hold a shift, but they were made via magic
Book ornaments:
- Dasher: a snowglobe ball
- Dancer: a pair of elf-style tap dance shoes
- Prancer: a basket of Christmas treats like that one Juicy Couture charm I used to have
- Vixen: candy cane heart
- Comet: a Christmas comet with glowing LEDs
- Cupid: a gingerbread house
- Donner: a miniature decorated Christmas tree
- Blitzen: a reindeer
- Demon: the Krampus pickle
- Daddy: a Santa on a broomstick
- Frosty: a snowball ornament
- Miss: sleigh with Pandora + Jack in it together, given to them by their parents, to show they are passing the roles down to their kids, and retiring to Fiji
Mistletoe first kiss:
- Pushed together by other people on purpose
- Pushed together by other people on accident
- She is standing under it first
- He is standing under it first
- She is dared
- He is dared
Stockings given by the hero to the girl, because “everyone deserves a stocking at Christmas”
Something outdoorsy that involves snow:
- Snowman building
- Sledding
- Sleigh ride
- Snowball fight
- Hot spring in the snow
- Following animal trails, but it turns out they were following bunny shifters who start to fuck and invite them to join. #Awkward
- Dance in a gazebo made of ice, as the gazebo is made around them (Demon Claws, have him pay Jack for this)
- Building an igloo and drinking hot cocoa from a thermos in it
- Walking in the snow and watching the town Christmas light displays
- Caroling in a group (Comet Claws, they bring the families together to do this)
- Sledding but in their shifts on their bellies (Miss Claws)
-Delivering gifts (Daddy Claws)
- Making the dunes into snowcaps for Ginny (Frosty Claws)(it gets reported on the news as a “freak” weather pattern)
Something cozy:
- Being snowed in together with no electricity, building a fire
- Baking together
- Decorating the Christmas tree together
Krampus makes The Boys do something community related that isn’t necessarily romantic:
- Shoveling the driveways of the elderly people
- Volunteering at a soup kitchen in another town (they teleport there)
Author’s note: this is a really long section.
The Christmas tree subplot changed to having Krampus deliver Avery a Christmas tree, and after that, it became part of his mate mark story.
Avery’s rental house in town was originally a cabin on the lake near the bakery.
There was originally a Christmas tree full of ornaments in the cabin.
Originally, there weren’t snow globes containing shifts. There were ornaments. Even earlier than this, there were toys.
The mistletoe kiss wasn’t a thing when I ended up writing the books, but during editing, I went back to add them, because that was something that I thought the books ended up needing.
The stockings were not put into the books.
Outdoor activities were changed to things the guys could do in their shifts and mixed with the cozy things requirement.
The community service stuff stopped being a thing Krampus made the heroes do because the entire point of them going to The Wreath was that they had to get off The Naughty List pretty much on their own. If Krampus handed the solution to them, that ruined the book. Plus, Krampus is a demon. He’s got Christmas magic, but he’s Naughty and slightly Evil because having magic powers has nothing to do with being good or bad, naughty or nice, good or evil, whatever. It’s a separate quality. Power has no relation to morality.
Crimes against Christmas
Dasher
Ran away from a girl who was under the mistletoe, had to learn to commit
Dancer
Ethan was too greedy and broke tradition when he inherited his company and didn’t donate to the Silent Night Auction. He has to learn that to give is better than receive.
Prancer
Vixen
Comet
Cupid
Meddling with the Christmas “Single and Ready to Jingle” Ball by pairing people up ahead of time leading to disastrous results , has to learn to focus on himself
Donner
Blitzen
Office of Infernal Affairs
Office of Eternal Affairs
Author’s note: originally, each hero had committed a crime against Christmas that got them on The Naughty List. This was changed to the mate madness subplot. I did not come up with crimes for every hero. Grand theft sleigh is missing from this list. The Offices of Infernal and Eternal Affairs were Hell and Heaven’s departments that were like The Naughty List and The Nice List. I hadn’t separated out Naughty and Nice from Good and Evil at this point. I didn’t want to make the books too religious because I don’t know how to write religious books. It’d be disrespectful of me to put out a bad work that is highly religiously influenced when I do not know much about any religion at all. I removed those sections and focused on The Naughty List and The Nice List instead.
Overall notes on the changes
I have only ever written about shifters in my paranormal romance world. Coming up with a system of Christmas magic was hard, and I ended up reeling a bunch of stuff in to make sure that The Twelve Mates Of Christmas was still paranormal romance and not urban fantasy. Urban fantasy is great, but what I was trying to tell was a paranormal romance story.
Paranormal and supernatural do not mean the same thing. They are often conflated.
The supernatural is outside the natural realm, which is the realm of natural law. It includes things that cannot be explained, like ghosts.
The paranormal exists in relation to the realm of the normal. It is outside of the realm of normalcy. The concept of the paranormal is contingent on a relation to the normal. For example, a high fantasy work would not be described as paranormal because it doesn’t exist in relation to a normal world. It would be described as fantastic — as a fantasy. A world where a heroine is thrust into a world of magic adjacent to her own would be pretty paranormal.
Supernatural and paranormal are used as synonyms when in my opinion — my bad opinion — it is the supernatural that makes a work paranormal. It is that outside of the natural realm that makes a work non-normal. The natural realm, in this case, is what happens naturally — and in the real world, shifters don’t walk into bakeries, do they?
Because normally has to do with comparison — the comparison of the un-normal to some ur-normal, some ideal (Platonic or otherwise) normal condition, the paranormal can only exist in relation to some normal state, else, the paranormal, as the only state, becomes the normal state.
Again, if a work is highly supernatural (involving fantastical elements outside the realm of natural law, components like ghosts, magic, shifters) but takes place in a world unlike our own, a world with no relation to our own within the narrative, that work is more on the side of fantasy than of the paranormal.
I always, and poorly, describe paranormal romance as being about normal problems in a paranormal (really, supernatural) world, and paranormal (really, supernatural) problems in a normal world.
That balance is what I was seeking to strike in The Twelve Mates Of Christmas. With the addition of Christmas magic, I tried to add a more human and normal element to the stories to provide a balance, as well as a contrast. Although I spitballed a variety of ideas for Christmas magic elements, many were eliminated to make room in the stories for the human stories. Just as Christmas, the holiday, is supposedly not about the spectacle of lights and gifts, but rather, the human stories we write with families, I tried to avoid making The Twelve Mates Of Christmas into a work of Christmas magic spectacle, over substance.
Maybe I failed, maybe not, but I tried. Merry Christmas!