Peppermint Lightning

By Phillip Davis

There is a force that powers the Christmas spirit, a magic that makes lights shine brighter, cookies taste sweeter, and keeps reindeer in the air. It is a power as old as Christmas itself, an unseen electric current of kindness, cheer, and good will. That force is called peppermint lightning. It is fading and in need of a champion.
Sidney, a nine year old school girl from Pleasant, Ohio, full of peppermint lightning herself, is called upon to help restore that magic to its former glory. She is recruited by a hopeful elf, an English gingerbread man, a matronly reindeer, and a proud snowman to bring the spirit of Christmas, the peppermint lightning, back to a community that has lost theirs. If she fails in her task, the spark of the holiday will fade and with it all the magic of Christmas. Will her determination, her random acts of Christmas kindness, and a little holiday mischief be enough to put the spark back in the season?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Phillip Davis
• Release date: Oct 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393466659

Phillip Davis

Carlene Wilcoxwas born in Greenville, North Carolina. She married and moved to Charlotte, North Carolina in 1984, where she now lives. She is the fourth child of six children. She is a wife and mother of two. She has nine grandchildren. Six of them are girls. That is the reason she wanted to write this book—so her grandgirls wouldn’t be left in the dark about their period and to prepare them about the changes their bodies would go though without fear. Carlene now works as a private-duty nurse, a job she loves. She is a minister. She has her doctors in theology, teaches Sunday school, and works in the church.

Book preview

Prologue

Pg. 3

Chapter One

Pg. 5

Chapter Two

Pg. 8

Chapter Three

Pg.15

Chapter Four

Pg. 20

Chapter Five

Pg. 25

Chapter Six

Pg. 27

Chapter Seven

Pg. 31

Chapter Eight

Pg. 36

Chapter Nine

Pg. 41

Chapter Ten

Pg. 44

Chapter Eleven

Pg. 46

Chapter Twelve

Pg. 51

Chapter Thirteen

Pg. 55

Chapter Fourteen

Pg. 60

Chapter Fifteen

Pg. 63

Chapter Sixteen

Pg. 68

Chapter Seventeen

Pg. 71

Chapter Eighteen

Pg. 74

Chapter Nineteen

Pg. 78

Peppermint Lightning

Chapter Twenty

Pg. 81

Chapter Twenty-One

Pg. 84

Chapter Twenty-Two

Pg. 87

Chapter Twenty-Three

Pg. 90

Chapter Twenty-Four

Pg. 92

Chapter Twenty-Five

Pg. 96

Chapter Twenty-Six

Pg. 101

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Pg. 106

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Pg. 111

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Pg. 114

Chapter Thirty

Pg. 127

Chapter Thirty-One

Pg. 123

An Afterword from Father Time Pg. 129

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A mighty huzzah to The Office of Letter and Light for their tireless efforts with NaNoWriMo, my intrepid editor Mr. Corey Rose for taking the time to help advise and revise. I offer a sincere word of thanks to cover artist Nada Orlic, and a barbaric yawp to the fine backers that supported the project through my Kickstarter campaign including, but not limited to: Michael Switzer, Larry Yerges, Jeff Davis, The Browncoats, The Karnosh family, Chris Davis, and Daniel Kilpatrick.

PREFACE

When I was child, my father once put sooty boot prints on the floor just outside the fireplace in the living room on Christmas morning. One year Santa left behind his corncob pipe. Another year there was a scrap of leather in the yard with a jingle bell on it, clearly dropped by a passing sleigh. There was never any doubt that Santa Claus came to my house.

We decorated sugar cookies with mom. We made ornaments and paper chains to use as advent calendars. We colored Christmas coloring books that got stored away in an old steamer trunk to return smelling like fresh crayons and Christmas every year. We went to candle light services at church on Christmas Eve and then joined friends for cookies and eggnog afterwards. We drove around town to gawk at Christmas lights. My younger brother played carols on the piano while my older brother and I found ways to try to make the days between Thanksgiving and Christmas or the hours between waking on Christmas Eve and waking the next morning pass more rapidly.

Our Christmases were magical. From gathering together to watch

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer with a mug of hot chocolate stirred with a candy cane, to untangling strings of lights to put on the bushes in the front yard, Christmas always held that special something, that inexpressible quality that no other time of year has. You said Merry Christmas, to the cashier at the grocery store and he or she said it back to you. You both smiled and went about your business feeling good about the exchange, that little magic spark that leapt between two strangers for an instant and reminded you both that December wasn’t just another time of year.

As I got older, it became a little harder to maintain that magic. Naturally, I came to realize that the magic is something you have to work to create.

You have to contribute to it as much as you draw from it. You have to make a point of appreciating the small things. You have to take time and make time to enjoy those unique things that only come around once a year: Christmas light displays, gingerbread house contests, school band performances, holiday bazaars, and the like. The less time you make, the more it starts to fade away. Life gets in the way and if you don’t push back and make some room for that magic, it gets lost.

The fight to renew that spirit got harder every year and not always because my life was too busy or because there was something lacking in my own spirit, but because somehow over the years it had become insensitive to say Merry Christmas. People fought over it. The other side fought back. They fought for what they called the true meaning of Christmas,

which was a specific celebration they felt was under attack. Suddenly Christmas trees, Santa Claus, and the nativity were involved in a battle. Add to that battle the people who celebrate things other than Christmas and 1

Phillip Davis

before I knew it, I was living in place where the magic had faded almost to a point of being unwelcome.

One year, not long ago, I sat in my apartment, single, frustrated, out of money, staring at the only artificial tree I’d ever put up, and wishing with everything I had that Christmas could be magical again. I wrote an essay called The Grinch has Won. It was about how I had lost the Christmas spirit. I had given up trying to press that magic into my life or share it with others, put away my Santa hat, and called it quits.

A year later, I found it again. I found it in the smile of my soon-to-be-wife. I found it in the way that she appreciated the small things, in the way that she carries the Christmas spirit in her heart all year round no matter what kind of opposition the world put before her. She showed me kindness and generosity and shared her boundless and contagious enthusiasm.

Before I knew it, I was back in the holiday game.

That was the year I decided there must be something more to Christmas magic. There had to be some way that I could describe it to make it possible for people who had not felt it to understand. It was more than that though.

I wanted to create a banner under which people could gather to share the experience and to spread whatever the power is that the holidays have.

Peppermint lightning was born! It was first a children’s book that was never finished. Then it was a lengthy verse, also never finished. Now you hold in your hand the book that has been percolating in my mind for six years, one that was written in 30 days as part of national novel writer’s month in November of 2013. In a perfect world, this will not be just a book, but the beginning of a movement

It has never been, nor will it ever be, my intention to hurt anyone’s feelings, to make anyone feel excluded or ostracized. I celebrate Christmas.

I celebrate it as a secular holiday. I think that the way I celebrate it lifts up the beauty, the charm, and that specialness that I described earlier. It is a holiday about peace and kindness and good will. It is a holiday that celebrates magic and wonder. My inviting you into this celebration is not in any way to diminish what you believe or how you celebrate but to ask you to join me that I might share with you the wonder of what I see. When I say to you Merry Christmas, it is not because I assume that everyone celebrates the season but because I hope in the deepest part of my heart that whatever you celebrate, you can partake in some of the spirit that saturates the holiday I recognize.

My mother once told me that she was afraid she and my father had set the bar too high at Christmas and that we’d spend our adult lives trying to find the Christmas magic that had existed when we were children. I might have agreed with her a few years. This book is a testament, however, to the fact that I am eternally grateful that my parents did what they did.

2

PROLOGUE

Hello there! I am guessing by the fact you’ve picked up this book that you have noticed there is more going on than anyone has ever told you. I am guessing, also, that maybe you know what it is, how it works, and where it comes from. Maybe you’ve seen it. Maybe you’re one of the ones who keep it going. I’m guessing you’re picking up the book not because the cover indicated something you’d never heard of before, a fantastical idea that sparked an interest in a previously unexplored subject, but rather because you’ve suspected, and maybe for some time, things aren’t quite what they seem.

You’ve picked up this book because you have experienced peppermint lightning.

Of course, I could be wrong. If I’m wrong, well then you have no idea what I’m talking, but you soon will.

Before we get too far into what’s really going on here, I ought to begin properly and introduce myself. I’m your narrator. You’ve guessed that much. There are a lot of things you might call me. Probably, the most common of them is Father Time. Father Time is more of a title for the job I perform than it is a proper name. It is my job, you see, to observe things as they happen. I keep an eye on the world. If something comes up that looks as though it might affect the forward motion of events as they’ve always been, well then I alert the right folks and they take care of things.

That’s all there is to it. I watch.

When you watch, you gather a lot of stories. When you’ve been around as long as I have, you’ve seen so many beginnings, so many endings, and are right smack in the middle of so many middles that you sometimes forget where a thing began and where it is supposed to end.

The most interesting stories, to me, are the ones that not everyone knows; the little secrets. I could tell you some behind the throne stories 3

Phillip Davis

about kings and emperors that would make you laugh until you fell over, or weep until your eyes were dry. I know the answers to most of the questions asked in those unexplained phenomenon television shows. It's true!

Those are the stories I like best.

Now, I seldom repeat any of them. That’s part of the job. I’m not supposed to go around snitching about every little thing I’ve seen. Imagine the trouble that would come from people knowing all the secrets! But, as I mentioned, when things are not going the way they’re supposed to be, when something changes in the normal flow or deviates from its true and natural direction, I do need to alert the right people. Sometimes that means I have to share a secret or two

That’s where you come in. The story of peppermint lightning was never supposed to be kept a secret. It just sort of was. It was one of those things that just happened and people took it for granted. No one talked about it because no one needed to. I guess it changed a bit over the years now and again, but it was always around. When a thing is always around, people tend to stop seeing it. There is nothing magic about that. It’s just a funny thing about people.

When people stopped seeing peppermint lightning, it didn’t go away. It just faded into the background and only those who really needed to see it, only those for whom it was immediately important did it continue to be anything more than an invisible force that they took for granted. It remained powerful. It remained ubiquitous. It remained reasonably constant.

Until it didn’t.

There is a secret I know, a story about how it all works that either you’ve suspected or you haven’t but you’ve probably taken for granted all of your life. It’s a story that needs to be told. I am supposed to tell the people who can change things. I am supposed to tell the ones who have the influence. I am supposed to, when I see a thing going in the wrong direction, alert anyone who can help correct it. I don’t mean the small things. I don’t get involved in football scores or network television programming choices. I only get involved in the things that really truly matter. This story is the result of that very duty. This is the story of that powerful charge, that electric spark, that most glorious of the hidden forces of your world and how close it came to dying out. I am talking about peppermint lightning.

4

CHAPTER ONE

Company for Christmas

There is a young lady I met a short time ago, a girl named Sidney. She was a lovely girl. It was her idea that I write this book. She was contacted shortly after the trouble began by some very concerned individuals, the individuals I contacted when I noticed the trouble. It sounds rather circular I know I contacted them, they contacted her, and she contacted me. When the young woman and I spoke after the events of this tale, we decided that the best way I could help her get done what it was she was trying to do would be to get the word out, to tell the story, to write the book that you are now reading. For me to be able to explain properly how this all goes, I need to go back to when Sidney became a part of the story and tell you how she came to my attention It is important that you see it the way she did. It is important that you see what is at stake.

It was cold night in late November, just after Thanksgiving. There was a thin layer of frost beginning to form on lawns in suburban Pleasant, Ohio.

There were snowflakes dancing in the atmosphere, intent on falling to the ground to the delight of many and the dismay of others. The wind was blowing softly, shaking the handful of remaining leaves off the smaller trees that lined Hill Boulevard, and scattering them gently down the street.

At the top of the hill, at the end of a driveway, up a flight of stairs, and through the last door on the left there was a girl, nine years old, named Sidney sleeping snuggly in her bed with her favorite stuffed animal. It was a reindeer she called Gilligan and it was warmly tucked under her arm beneath her coziest blanket which was pulled up under her chin.

Gilligan stayed in a plastic bin tucked away in Sidney’s basement for 11

months out of the year. It was only after Thanksgiving that Gilligan was allowed back in Sidney’s room. The young lady practically waited all year to 5

Phillip Davis

see her friend again. When bedtime came around on that first night out of the bin, Gilligan got 11 months’ worth of hugs and cuddles all packed in to the few weeks he’d be upstairs.

Gilligan wasn’t the only thing that had come out of the basement that day. The boxes full of twinkle lights, the totes full of wrapping paper, the trays full of ornaments, the bags full of wreaths, the stacks of sweaters, the Christmas sheets, the Christmas dishes, the Christmas towels,