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Cozy Winter Favorites – Festivals, Holiday Lights, and Cold Weather Tea
My favorite holiday is Halloween…until it’s over and then I’m sure that my favorite holiday is Christmas. From the lights and the atmosphere, to burying myself in blankets, the season certainly holds some of my favorite things. It was these favorite things that inspired many of the events and items in my cozy fantasy novel, Tea Tale. The story is set during the in-world winter holiday, Midwinter Nights Faire. Let me tell you about my favorite winter holiday things from the real world and how they influenced my fantasy tale!
Not Just Light Strands
I love Christmas lights! Not just the light strands around the tree, or the glowing rainbow on the eaves of houses. I love candle lights in the windows and the lighted yard decorations and displays that have scenes and shapes like penguins jumping over sleighs. So when I wrote Tea Tale, I had one of their traditions be lighted lanterns. Strings of them cross over streets and hang over the market, and shops and living areas have smaller light strands – all lit by a little bug called a fireworm. To me, festive lights are like little dots of magic.
Hot Tea
Year round I love tea, but especially in winter months a hot cup of tea hits just right. Some of my favorite blends are made with black tea leaves and aromatic elements like vanilla and lavender. When I sat down to write Tea Tale, I knew that I wanted to have tea drinking be a central theme for the story. In the book, there are three main teas that are served and they were inspired by some of my favorite tea drinks I consume more often during winter months.
Winter Festivals
Lastly, I enjoy a good winter market or festival. Near me is a German Christmas market that happens every year, Christkindlmarkt. The performers like jazz bands and dancers, the food like hot salted pretzels and hot cocoa, and the vendors that have unique items especially the festival-specific collector gifts like mugs shaped like boots and wooden ornaments. I don’t even have to buy anything!
(Narrator: she did. In fact, she purchased cheddar popcorn and various chocolates and cookies and—)
Ok, yes I did buy things. But I also watched the ice skaters, the polka band, visited the giant Christmas tree, and made a craft with my kids. But the best part? Making memories with my family and starting traditions. I tried to capture all of this in Tea Tale as their Midwinter Nights Festival occurs around the city at night and features games, street vendors, special items, and a bazaar.
What about you? What are your favorite cozy things or moments about winter and holidays?
Tea makes everything cozier in Trelvania!
Divine has learned a lot about herself, her magic, and her goddess. But now she and Saph are getting ready for the Midwinter Nights Faire, and that’s the worst time for her magic to go haywire! She might be able to talk to animals now, and Saph seems to be flirting with other patrons. Is there anything left in Iramont for Divine?
It will take an unlikely quest, some world-shaking revelations, and some unexpected friends to show Divine her direction in life. The journey will be a tale to tell…over tea!
Kristina W. Kelly is an author of poetry, short stories, and novels including the coauthored epic fantasy and sci-fi fusing series the Etherea Cycle. Her scifi and fantasy poetry collection Imaginari includes her photography, and her cozy fantasy adventure series Tales of Trelvania was inspired by RPGs.
Kristina is Secretary for Poetry Society of Indiana (2025), published in online poetry magazines and anthologies, and has received multiple honorable mentions and semi-finalist from the Writers of the Future contest. She won second place in the 2023 Poe-it Like Poe Contest.
Since childhood, writing stories on her mother’s typewriter or trying to catalog her own books like a library, Kristina has been in love with storytelling. Her undergraduate pursuits focused on Psychology, Music, and Computer Science. With trumpet as her main instrument and a connection to nature, Kristina often works music and visual landscapes into her writings.
She takes photography, makes various crafts, plays video games (RPGs are her favorite), dabbles in other instruments, and tends to her flower garden. She loves going on new adventures in the great wide somewhere (sometimes just by picking up a new book). Kristina resides in Indiana with her husband and sons.
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The festive lights are definitely my favorite aspect of winter.
A Christmas festival where I live.
Oh you had me at cozy fantasy!
I live in the desert so it doesn’t really get cold here. Well, cold for ME but not snow-cold. I do love getting a big, warm blanket and curling up on the couch with a book and a cat or three.