Introducing... Who Packed the Turkey?

Hi all

Can you believe it’s the end of September? Time for me to start ramping up interest in this year’s Counting Down to Christmas! I’ll pop into your inbox, a couple more times before Advent, with background information about Who Packed the Turkey?

Introducing Counting Down to Christmas 2025

This year, our Counting Down to Christmas includes the daily release of one or two chapters from an all-age fictional story called Who Packed the Turkey? We meet Anna, her family and friends for a Christmas adventure. Anna’s Christmas plans are completely upended and she becomes homeless on Christmas Eve. The story covers her journey over a few days. Through our real-time Advent, we travel with Anna as she joins the Three Wise Movers on a road trip. We discover what it means to experience God-With-Us. This includes a retelling of the Nativity Story. Anna’s own story has many quirky, fun and poignant coincidences with the story of the first Christmas.

In 2025 an intentional focus on interaction with subscribers is included. Accompanying the daily content will be a curated comments section. We’ll introduce three real-life wise movers. These wonderful, strong women each take turns curating the daily comments section. Subscribers can choose to participate in the conversation, read the comments or simply read the chapters each day.

Some subscription details

The monthly updates are free. The paid resource will begin from 29 November. Last year I was able to offer Counting Down to Christmas free thanks to a grant and some generous donating subscribers. However, this year, we’re returning to a paid resource. I have tried to keep the price reasonable. There are several payment options available on our website. Check out our payment options for both individuals and groups on our website and please contact me if you can’t afford to pay but want to take part.

All going well, we’ll be delivering Counting Down to Christmas in a different format this year. Maybe by next month I will be able to reveal more about this part of the plan! Payment can be made any time via our website. If you’ve previously paid via Substack - don’t rush to pay your subscription here just yet! If you’ve already paid for this year via Substack, don’t worry - your subscription will travel with you to the new version of Counting Down to Christmas!

For today’s post I thought I’d answer some questions! I made up these questions, but if you have other questions you’d like answered, send them my way and I’ll include them in a future monthly update!

Caroline’s Questions and Answers

Where did the idea come from?

The beginnings of the theme for this year go back to Christmas Eve 2023. It was late afternoon, and we were driving to my stepson’s home for our annual Christmas Eve get-together. Our journey was slowed by a moving truck blocking our path. The road was reduced to one lane and on our side of the road there was a long queue.

Surprisingly, late on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, the movers were filling the truck with furniture. Someone was moving house. Who moves house at Christmas? At the time, we talked and laughed about what the family who were moving would have for Christmas dinner. Someone in our car said something like, “Hope they don’t lose the turkey!” Like many stories, this phrase rolled around in my head for days to come.

How did the idea evolve into Counting Down to Christmas?

Getting an idea and doing something with it are two very different things. Sometimes it takes a few random things coming together.

A few days after Counting Down to Christmas 2023, I was already thinking about future countdowns. It happens to me every year - the buzzy feeling a writer gets when people interact and read their work was still with me. The energy usually propels me into figuring out a new idea when the ink is hardly dry on the last effort. By the end of my summer holiday I’ve typically settled on the beginnings of my idea for the following year.

Churning and spinning in my head were the questions: Who moves house at Christmas? Who’d want to be homeless at Christmas? A few days after we’d seen the moving truck, a few days after celebrating Christmas... a story idea gripped me… about a girl who became homeless at Christmas... I didn’t know where she was headed, but the ideas came thick and fast and I found myself writing the beginnings of a fiction story instead of getting an idea for Counting Down to Christmas 2024.

If you were a subscriber last year in 2024, you may remember Jacynthia’s beautiful photos we featured, particularly those shared on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. The photos featured a Māori baby Jesus, homeless, lying amongst ferns in his makeshift bed. The powerful and profound image stayed with me as another Christmas summer holiday began. The simple image appealed to my all-age sensibilities, inviting layers of understanding as we each bring our own experiences to our Christmas reflections. I knew whatever Counting Down to Christmas 2025 would hold, it would have to be all-age related.

The image instead inspired me to pull out the all-age story I’d started the year before. The story seemed even more honest, real and layered than when I’d started it the previous summer. As I imagined and wrote my way through my holiday - a multi-layered, episodic, all-age story emerged with a chapter-by-chapter reveal… and Counting Down to Christmas 2025 was born!

Why write on a summer Christmas holiday?

A summer Christmas holiday at the beach always inspires writing but it’s hard to write when holidaying with a crowd. Enter, the delightful, and attention seeking Babs, the cat who has now featured in two of our Counting Down to Christmas adventures.

Babs comes on holiday with us, and when there’s a crowd, she gets confined at night to our room. She sleeps settled until the early dawn. When we’re in the period of the longest days of the year, dawn is early—like 3am. This means Babs is awake early. She does not wake quietly! So as not to disturb the house, Babs and I get up and walk outside (yes, she’s a cat who goes outside on a leash).

Once Babs is exhausted and happy after one or two hours visiting the neighbouring cows, rolling around in the long grass, staring at the birds hoping they’ll fly into her mouth, stalking the rabbits, and seeing the beauty of the sun rising, she’s ready for a big sleep. While she’s been frolicking, I’ve been following her around, brewing up the next chapter of the story that’s gripped me and filled me with hope and energy.

The rest of the house is still quiet when we creep inside. The only sounds, an occasional snore from one of the dozen residents. Babs lies on the couch and sleeps for the next two, three or four hours as I write up the chapter for the Counting Down to Christmas story I’ve been imagining over the last couple of hours... And yes, no surprise, there’s a cat or two in this story! And of course an afternoon nap is essential!

Why did you want to weave in the Nativity story rather than just write a Christmas fiction story?

I love Christmas. I love everything about decorating, making gifts, wrapping, celebrating and being with family. I totally understand why some people love celebrating Christmas and having a great time, but don’t know or understand the heart of the Nativity story.

Yet this is the story of God-With-Us. The Biblical narrative is short, but between the lines resonates stories we can relate to our ordinary lived experiences. I will always find ways to weave the story of God being alongside us, because for me, this is at the heart of my everyday living… God is with me!

Anna has a moment of revelation when she feels God is with her - it’s a little moment pulled from my own life. I wasn’t homeless, but as a nine year old, far from home, on a January night when the stars twinkled above my head, I experienced my own trauma when my brother was involved in a terrible accident. In a moment of such complete aloneness I felt God was with me - this was hope in the darkness.

The Christmas story captures some of that hope I felt then, since and today. I’ve always been drawn to the wise travellers who used their knowledge and their hope to follow a star to find the baby king. I’ve been creatively coming up with different ways to retell the Nativity story for many, many years. This is my first fictional attempt at sharing the story but for me, it feels natural to weave the Biblical narrative throughout.

How will the Nativity story be revealed in Who Packed the Turkey?

I’m not going to tell you all my secrets now... otherwise what’s the point of a day-by-day reveal? Who Packed the Turkey? shares a journey of discovery as well as a practical journey. We read along as a family move out of their home… and we move with them… to somewhere else. You’ll find clues pointing to the Nativity story from the Bible. Some will be harder to spot, but others are clear, like how Anna’s mum is Mary, and her stepdad is Joe.

What’s an all-age Story?

Let’s start with what it isn’t. This is not a children’s story. It’s not an adult story. The story doesn’t belong to any particular age group or stage of life. An all-age story - is a story for everyone!

Who Packed the Turkey? has been written for a reading age of a 10 year old but this doesn’t mean it’s for 10 year olds. The skill level required to read the words and sentence structure is what could be expected of a 10 year old. Many adults have a reading age of a 10 year old and so do some 5 year olds.

The reader brings themselves to a story. This story is multi-layered, allowing the reader to interpret and absorb according to their own circumstances, prior experience and knowledge. Our own unique life journey changes our perceptions of the layers within an all-age story. Some events and conversation in this story will go over the heads of the younger reader. They don’t have the life experience to pick up the clues. Older readers may find themselves moved to tears by the simplest aspects of the story. The goal is for readers of all ages to search and find gems hidden in the daily reveals.

Why offer an interactive section?

I like to invite action in our Advent series. Rather than adding questions or activity ideas in the daily emails, this year it seems appropriate to simply share the daily post as chapters… so the reader can be absorbed by the story.

Enter the Three Wise Movers.

I’ve invited three wise women to facilitate the comments section each day. Here’s where the participation will take place. I’ll turn up there too… and this is where I might add in some extra ideas. I hope all subscribers feel comfortable to participate in this joyful real time conversation. I’m really looking forward to this part of Counting Down to Christmas this year.

Who are the Three Wise Movers?

You’re going to have to find out more about the fictional Three Wise Movers when you read Who Packed the Turkey? I’ll introduce you to my real life Three Wise Movers in one of our upcoming updates.

Can we please get a taste of what’s to come?

Why not?! If you’ve read this far, I think the least I can do - is offer you the first chapter.

And if you hang around here over the next few weeks and months… there might be a more chapter reveals to come ahead of Advent starting.

Feel free to share this post with friends and family. I’d love it if you were to spread the word for me!

Looking for layers

The comments section on this post is open to all. Let me know what layers you discover in this chapter… I’d love to hear your thoughts!