{"id":47666,"date":"2025-12-13T00:01:32","date_gmt":"2025-12-13T08:01:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=47666"},"modified":"2026-06-04T09:44:55","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T09:44:55","slug":"all-i-want-for-christmas-is-readers-for-wrestling-with-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/all-i-want-for-christmas-is-readers-for-wrestling-with-god\/","title":{"rendered":"All I Want for Christmas Is . . . Readers for &#8216;Wrestling with God&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_47686\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-47686\" style=\"width: 1200px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/2025\/12\/13\/all-i-want-for-christmas-is-readers-for-wrestling-with-god\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"https:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/2025\/12\/13\/all-i-want-for-christmas-is-readers-for-wrestling-with-god\/ noopener\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-47686 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/IMG_2381-1-resized.webp\" alt=\"all i want for christmas is readers for my book pointsetia-with-gift-book\" width=\"1200\" height=\"675\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-47686\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A holiday gift book. All I want for Christmas is &#8212; readers for &#8220;Wrestling with God.&#8221; <em>Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>In the Forties and Fifties the big secular <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=WI02_UJ1C6I\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Christmas song<\/a> was &#8220;All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Written by a second-grade teacher whose pupils were missing a front tooth or two and couldn&#8217;t pronounce the word &#8220;Christmas,&#8221; the song became a perennial hit..<\/p>\n<p>Fast forward to 1994 and the release of Mariah Carey&#8217;s up tempo <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=yXQViqx6GMY\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">&#8220;All I Want for Christmas Is You.&#8221;<\/a>\u00a0 It too was a hit, and it has dominated the Billboard Hot 100 list ever since.<\/p>\n<h5><strong>As for Me, All I Want for Christmas Is . . . Readers<\/strong><\/h5>\n<p>And now here in 2025, I have my own big wish:<\/p>\n<p>All I want for Christmas is readers &#8212; for my recently rereleased book, <a href=\"https:\/\/wrestlingwithgodbook.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">&#8220;Wrestling with God: Stories of Doubt and Faith.&#8221;<\/a><\/p>\n<p>You &#8212; if you have read my book &#8212; can help make my holiday wish come true. Just go on over to the Amazon website and give the book some stars. (And buy it, if you haven&#8217;t already.) And say something nice in the comments section.<\/p>\n<p>Comments and stars will inspire the Amazon algorithms to show my book to more potential readers. So will a purchase of the book.<\/p>\n<p>(By the way &#8212; if you gave WWG stars or a review when it first came out, <strong>please do it again.<\/strong>\u00a0Amazon has not migrated those old reviews to the new edition.)<\/p>\n<h5><strong>How to Write a Book Review on Amazon<\/strong><\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li>Go to the Amazon site for &#8220;Wrestling with God.&#8221; Be sure to go to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Wrestling-God-Stories-Doubt-Faith\/dp\/B0DJKCJFCN\/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3RGFQYJZ36ZY9&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Z2POA1HS3UkO7LsJmjx401bwZqpoUQVSiRz6NtTwjw_GjHj071QN20LucGBJIEps.1tifXZ-NUlDOVSDGHjLYhkfKjf9G0fei7J_bkwuhPJY&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=wrestling+with+god+newhall&amp;qid=1765579476&amp;sprefix=wrestling+with+god+newhall%2Caps%2C169&amp;sr=8-1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">site for the newest edition<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Scroll waaaay down the page &#8212; about 3\/5 of the way to the bottom, past a bunch of ads. Do not be discouraged.<\/li>\n<li>Look for the line <strong>Customer Reviews<\/strong>, followed by the line <strong>Review This Product<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>There you will see words in a box <strong>Write a Review<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>Click on the box. A review page will show.<\/li>\n<li>Give the book some stars. Say a few nice words, a sentence or two. (Or paragraphs, if you are so inspired.) Then give your review a title.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Anyone can review a book on Amazon who has an Amazon account and has spent at least $50 on Amazon in the past year. You can write a review without buying the book from Amazon, but your review will have more clout if you do buy a copy.<\/p>\n<h5><strong>Kindle?<\/strong><\/h5>\n<p>My tech guru is working on getting WWG set up on Kindle. Stay tuned.<\/p>\n<p>Thanks for doing this.\u00a0Happy Holidays. And may all of your holiday wishes &#8212; big and small &#8212; come true!<\/p>\n<p><em>Some thoughts on the Advent season at <a href=\"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/2017\/12\/03\/virgin-blanca\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">&#8220;The Virgin Blanca and Baby Jesus \u2014 Still Smiling This Advent Season After 700 Years.&#8221;<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/2025\/12\/13\/all-i-want-for-christmas-is-readers-for-wrestling-with-god\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"https:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/2025\/12\/13\/all-i-want-for-christmas-is-readers-for-wrestling-with-god\/ noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-47686 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/IMG_2381-1-resized.jpg\" alt=\"all i want for christmas is readers for m book poinsetia-with-gift-book\" width=\"1200\" height=\"675\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>All I want for Christmas is readers for my book, &#8220;Wrestling with God: Stories of Doubt and Faith.&#8221; You can help make it happen.\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/2025\/12\/13\/all-i-want-for-christmas-is-readers-for-wrestling-with-god\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48416,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[1364,1393,1628,134,35,1600,53],"class_list":["post-47666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-writing-room","tag-advent","tag-amazon","tag-amazon-reviews","tag-books","tag-christmas","tag-gifts","tag-wrestling-with-god"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47666"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47666\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48417,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47666\/revisions\/48417"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}