National Hot Chocolate Day!

Hot chocolate! Who doesn’t love the warm and luscious taste of a cup of hot chocolate? So it seems perfectly natural that we would have a national holiday committed to nothing but hot chocolate. It’s one of my most simple pleasures of winter, but I’ve been known to have a cup of hot chocolate in the fall, in early spring and rarely, but it has happened, on a cool summer evening.

As a child growing up in the Rockies, hot chocolate, hot cider, and hot Jell-O (as my mom called it; yes, that Jell-o.) were staples at our breakfast. The smell takes me back to cold mornings, snow falling, and siblings everywhere.

But now when I look at the options available in hot chocolate, it is so much more than my mom’s custom mixture of marshmallows, melting, and gooey covering the top. You can get dark chocolate, milk chocolate, supreme, caramel, mint, rose, cherry, cookies and cream, French vanilla, and more to include exotic flavors like amaretto, hazelnut, Irish cream, butterscotch, and raspberry. You can make it from scratch or order the most delectable packets and have it in your cup in moments.

National Hot Chocolate Day is January 31! Enjoy a Brew-tiful beverage today.

Just reading the list of options can put you in the kitchen pulling out supplies of cups, marshmallows, and fluff. Whether you live in Florida, Maine, Washington State, Southern California or in the Rockies, today, celebrate National Hot Chocolate Day with a cup of your favorite flavor.

I often find that the characters I write, either while curled up with their favorite person or favorite book or while pondering a life change, are looking out the window with a steaming brew filled with hot chocolate. I find it fascinating that we as writers and authors, utilize the richness of our life experiences to shape the characters we create. If life imitates art and art imitates life, then it can be seen no clearer than a National Hot Chocolate Day and in the writing of my favorite characters.

So today, whether you make it yourself, pour it out of a package, order it at your favorite coffee & beverage shop, or just grab some at the window with a doughnut, grab and enjoy your favorite hot chocolate. With or without fluff (marshmallow cream), large or small marshmallows, or naked (meaning no marshmallows at all); however you enjoy it, take a moment to celebrate National Hot Chocolate Day and the memories that a steaming brew brings.

Until next time,

M. G.