Finding Father Christmas Robin Jones Gunn

Robin Jones Gunn is the bestselling author of sixty books, including her wildly successful Sisterchicks® series, the Glenbrooke series, and the popular Christy Miller series for teens. You may visit Robin’s Web site at www.robingunn.com.

By Robin Jones Gunn

Creating the story for Finding Father Christmas was a writer’s dream. It began with a research trip to England with my grown daughter and our mutual friend, Stephanie. I’d been to England before but traveling for a week with these two twenty-something women opened my eyes in new ways to the charms of London and the surrounding environs.

We attended an outdoor evening performance of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and were so chilled that we put our souvenirs in our laps and used the plastic shopping bags as slippers for cold feet! The play was terrific. In my journal I jotted the idea of incorporating the world of theater into Finding Father Christmas. From there, the creative writing wheels began to spin.

A comfy train ride took us to Bexley Heath where we met up with my friend and British author, Penny Culliford and her daughter. The five of us toured William Morris’ Red House. I took lots of pictures and had images of Red House in my mind’s eye as I wrote about the Whitcombe’s brick manor with the grand arched entrance and fairy-tale-like turret.

We also took a jaunt to the city of Rochester where Dickens lived. It was here, while strolling down one the lanes, that I found inspiration for The Tea Cosy and the opening scene of the book. It was also in Rochester on the castle ruins that we stopped to ask some uniformed traffic officers, “What interesting things can we do in your fair city?” They looked at each other and shrugged. Then one of them said, “You can help us direct traffic.” I said, “Sure. Why not?” I was given the officers neon vest and stocking cap and went to work directing traffic, much to the embarrassment of my travel companions.

During a conversation a few days later while lingering over tea and scrumptious scones in The Orangery Restaurant at Kensington Palace, I realized this Christmas novella was going to be about belonging. What sweeter gift is there for any woman at any stage of life than to discover the place and the people to whom she belongs?
For Miranda in “Finding Father Christmas” her journey begins with a search to find her birth Father and instead she meets her Heavenly Father. Close to His heart is where she belongs. I hope that truth comes as a gift for many readers this Christmas. Whatever they are looking for or longing for, I pray they will find the true Father of Christmas and see that where they belong is close to His heart.

From an interview for the Hachette website regarding inspiration for Finding Father Christmas:

Last year I was in Oxford and visited the church where Lewis worshipped for forty some years. He’s buried in the adjoining graveyard. The church is small, made of local sandstone that’s that buttery golden shade that makes it seem like the building is catching the glow of the sun even when the clouds are thick overhead.

At the front of the chapel is a stained glass window with a Christ figure seated on a throne – the Prince of Peace. His arms are extended in an invitation to “come” and he has blond hair. A very anglo-saxon Christ. When I sat in the pew right where Lewis sat all those years and looked at the stained glass window, I thought, “It’s Prince Caspian!” I wrote about this chapel in Finding Father Christmas.

All over Oxford are statues of lions and door knockers with lion’s heads and lovely trails with brave little skittering mice. I could “see” so many of the images in his world that were common place and then see again how he took them and translated them into imagery and “fairy stories” as he called the Narnia tales. I mean, think about it. Here is this brilliant professor who is capable of conversing on a myriad of exalted levels and he chose to give space to his imagination and write about all these pieces of life around him but in an imaginary way. What a wonderful gift he gave to all writers. He put his creative mind to work in a way that even the most common and elementary level reader is invited to have their view expanded of all that is eternal.