title: Excuses to Feast: Bringing Advent and Christmas to Life
author: Emily Snell
description: Emily Snell grew up as an avid reader who hated writing. But one day she realized that most authors loved cats and tea, her two favorite things. So, she stopped fighting the inevitable and she began to write.
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  ![image](../../cover.jpeg)
  
  
  CHRISTMAS EVIE
  
  
  NICOLA MAY
  
  
  It’s two days before Christmas and Evie Harris finds herself both manless and
  jobless. After a chance encounter with handsome Greg (and egged on by her toy-
  boy-eating friend, Bea) she agrees to work at a homeless shelter on Christmas
  Day.
  
  
  Striking up an unlikely friendship with homeless Yves, Evie begins an
  unwitting journey of spiritual awakening, all set against the sparkling winter
  backdrop of London.
  
  
  A New Year’s Eve revelation is on its way … but will it leave Evie with a
  happy heart, or will she allow the pre-Christmas past to dictate her future?
  
  
  For Philip
  
  
  _You are not a human being in search of a spiritual experience. You are a
  spiritual being immersed in a human experience_.
  
  
  Teilhard de Chardin
  
  
  **Prologue**
  
  
  ‘So you decide today of all days to tell me you’re shagging that moth-eaten,
  bag of fleas you call a secretary? How bloody cliché.’
  
  
  ‘I couldn’t keep it in any longer.’
  
  
  ‘Well, tha