Evergreen Tidings

Evergreen Tidings from the Baumgartners

KIM CARSON’S INTERVIEW WITH GRETCHEN ANTHONY

I took some time to speak with Gretchen Anthony, author of the novel Evergreen Tidings from the Baumgartners. The story follows an overbearing mother, Violet Baumgartner, who has good intentions in wanting the best for her family and how the world sees it. But over the course of the story it’s revealed, the family is not as perfect as she envisions it to be. The title birthed from the mother’s Christmas letters over the years, always starting with, “Dearest loved ones, far and near Evergreen Tidings from the Baumgartners.”

KIM CARSON: So, first of all, tell me a little bit about your book and what sparked the idea for it. GRETCHEN ANTHONY: Her character

actually came to me just growing up over the years and my family would receive hundreds of Christmas cards and letters over the years and I loved reading them. Eventually, I began to recognize that every year there were a few gems in there. Anyone who’s ever received one of these letters knows what I’m talking about, that there are lots of Violet Baumgartners out there.

KC: Gretchen, I get those holiday letters at

Christmastime, and usually enclosed is a

Christmas photo of the family with the dog in what looks like a Hallmark moment.

But what I’m wondering, is some of these letters are great. They’re a full page of text on pretty holiday stationery, while other letters go on and on for two, sometimes three pages. Do you have any tips on writing a good holiday letter? GA: Oh, I hope so. I write a letter every year.

Single page. I have a rule. I call it the single page, single glass rule. Don’t write anything longer than it takes you to get through a single glass of wine or a beer or a Diet Coke, whatever your pleasure, right?

If you’re working your way into your second glass and you’re still writing, you’ve gone way too long. Every year, we get a letter that’s front and back and in columns. I love their family dearly but that’s too much.

KC: Yes. It makes it difficult to read. Those letters I get halfway through and just stop.

I look at the family photo, smile and move on to the next letter. Where should the letter writer start? Help me out here? GA: I think, “What have we done this year?”

We’re so prone in our busy life to think in terms of accomplishments, to-do lists and that’s sort of where we start and that’s fine. We start with where we went on vacation, the sports our kids play, and all the places that we have to drive for car pool, and the things that we do at work. And that’s a great starting point except life isn’t, hopefully, lived in a to-do list. It’s really a series of moments connected together.

What you want to do is really take it to the next level and make it not about the list, but about the moments. KC: Is it okay to not make everything sound so perfect? Because I enjoy the funny stories,

“Bobby slid into home base and broke his arm but the team won.” GA: Oh, absolutely. The best letters sound like you’re talking to your best friend on the phone. Yes, they should be authentic. They should sound like you. They don’t even have to be extensive. We got a letter one year that was just the story of our friend’s bear encounter that summer. They had gone camping, and they thought they were these great outdoors people, and they were hiking, and they were having a great time. But they were completely done in by this little baby black bear, and it was hysterical. If you want to look at it as a moral of the story, they were like, “We’re not as cool as we thought we were.” Think about it as the art of connecting with other people. It shouldn’t look and sound like a game of out-doing each other.

KC: Why do you think people resonated so much with Violet in your book? I mean she is overbearing and kind of wants everything to look perfect. Why do you think so many people connected with her? GA: I love doing book events because someone comes up to me at every single event, if not more than one person, and they say, “I swear you were writing about my mother-in-law,” or “I swear you’re writing about my aunt,” because we all know a Violet.

The other thing about her is that she’s – yes, she’s over-the-top and yes, she’s braggy and obnoxious and she does crazy things.

She’s crazy intrusive, but she’s driven out of love. She’s driven out of fear and her vulnerabilities. Those are human emotions, human reactions that we all have. So, even though we’re not Violet, hopefully, we see her in ourselves as well and people connect with that.

I tell people if you’re worried about being obnoxious in your letters, just read the book because you can never be as obnoxious as

Violet is. Again, if you don’t sound authentic, if you don’t sound like a real person in your letter, you haven’t gotten there.

One year when we were raising the three boys, we had three kids within four years, and one year they were all potty training.

I wrote an entire Christmas letter about underwear because that’s all we talked about at the dinner table. One of my kids was wearing multiple pairs. One of my kids wasn’t wearing anything.

I could never keep it straight in the laundry. People still talk about that letter because they’re like, “it was hysterical.” That’s exactly what we’re talking about at our dinner table. KC: I love that. You have a character in your book, Cerise and she’s kind of interesting to me. Where

did you get the idea for Cerise and that whole role as playing a daughter, a child, that sort of thing? GA: Yes. Cerise. She was interesting to explore as a character, because she was someone that

I knew her mother wanted to be so perfect, but in her own way so I had to find a way to make Cerise authentic to her - what I saw as her authentic self. Cerise is a lot like her dad.

She’s a counterbalance to her mom’s manic needs and yet she’s flawed in her own ways too. I really like Cerise. I think I would be friends with her if I bumped into her. KC: Yes. That’s what I was going to say. I think

I would be friends with her too. Then, you also added a gay daughter for Violet? GA: Well, as I was thinking about her character, she has this need to be perfect about everything. I do that in a couple of ways with Violet. Her husband is this highlyaccomplished scientist. He studies intestinal problems. That’s about the least desirable science that she could be talking about. So, he has to be a great scientist but he studies gross stuff. Her daughter is perfect in so many ways, but she’s not living the life that her mother wants her to live, and so I wrote her the gay character, because I needed Violet to be faced with the challenge that would be hard for her to accept, and she does.

You can catch up with Gretchen Anthony & her work on her website: www.GretchenAnthony.com