Shelley's Book Case: Guest Post- Victoria Hamilton

Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone! I am honored to have the Lovely Victoria Hamilton with us! Get some coffee or tea and visit with us as Victoria is talking about holidays!

Good Morning Victoria!

St. Patty’s Day Is Here!

Holidays… humans have always wanted times and reasons to celebrate. Besides birthdays and anniversaries, for many of us the year is cut up into segments of looking forward to or preparing for festivities of some sort or another. Valentine’s Day with red hearts everywhere, Easter with pastel colors on everything and eggs to color and chocolate bunnies to munch, Fourth of July, Canada Day, Labor Day, Remembrance Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas… once you get to adulthood every month seems to bring something that needs to have shopping or cooking, or organizing done to achieve the right level of celebration. It’s all fun, but whew… it can get to be a little much!

Valentine’s Day is full of pressure to spend time with your loved one but in some über romantic setting. Thanksgiving is nuts… so much cooking and traveling and crowding everything in. Which family to spend it with? Where did we go last year? Where are we going next year? And Christmas! The shopping list gets longer and cooking tasks become more onerous every year, and the stores start advertising earlier and earlier. By December first a lot of people are already Christmased out.

And then there is St. Patty’s Day. St. Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland, and March 17th is his death date. He is celebrated as a priest who, after escaping captivity in Ireland to go back to his native Britain, returned to Ireland as a missionary to bring Christianity to the populace. He reputedly used the shamrock as a teaching tool to explain the Trinity to his flock.

So… how did such a religious holiday turn into what it now is, a reason to wear green, kiss strangers and get drunk? I can’t say I know how that happened, but I would wager it was a reaction to all the darned preparation, purchasing and cooking the other holidays call for!

Good old St. Patty’s! One day to get together with friends, sing Irish songs and just have fun. Who wouldn’t want that? I live in a university student area, so St. Patty’s Day you see a whole lot of them heading downtown in green clothes, fuzzy green top hats, and t-shirts that say Kiss Me I’m Irish!

But for me St. Patty’s Day has always had another purpose, and that is to wish a Happy Birthday to a very special person, my sister. And what a fun day to have a birthday! She’s always loved all the wearing of the green and cheeriness abounding. We celebrate with good friends and raise a glass, both to St. Pat, and to my sister! She’s a gifted writer herself, and the whole reason I’m a writer today, so… will you all wish a very special Happy Birthday to Mickey?

~::~

Victoria Hamilton, nationally bestselling author of the Vintage Kitchen Mystery series, is the pseudonym of Donna Lea Simpson, bestselling author of romance and historical mystery novels.

Victoria starting reading mystery novels at the age of 12 and devoured Agatha Christie mysteries, as well as those of Dorothy L. Sayers and Ngaio Marsh. She still adores mysteries,

especially the cozy mysteries of Janet Bolin, Krista Davis, and others.

She loves to cook, and collects teapots and teacups, as well as vintage kitchen utensils and bowls. She also enjoys crafts, especially cross-stitching and crocheting, and spends summer days in the garden, drinking tea or wine. Besides the Vintage Kitchen Mystery series Victoria also writes the Merry Muffin Mystery series and the Teapot Collector Mystery series which debuts with Tempest in a Teapot, out June 3rd, 2014.