Playing Santa

A good acquaintance of mine put out a call for help on social media this weekend.

Twenty-five children living in a local motel were in need of Christmas cheer. Who could help?

I immediately asked Rebekah if we could afford to donate twenty-five of our BryonySeries children's books (Bertrand The Mouse, The Adventures of Cornell Dyer, Girls of the BryonySeries, etc.).

As Rebekah was figuring that out, we had a bit of a Christmas miracle.

Let's just say someone dropped in, heard about our plans, and offered to buy the books. And then the offer was modified. This person said the kids should get TWO books a piece.

Then that person called another person, who also offered to donate two books to each child, for a total of four books per child.

Then that social media was modified: Approximately sixteen adults were with the twenty-five children and in need of Christmas cheer, too.

So my two donors bought WriteOn Joliet's last fifteen Christmas anthologies, as well WriteOn Joliet's last two "Cheetah" anthologies, and even my copy of the Cheetah anthology, for a total of eighteen books (in case the count was wrong).

Now I had the challenge of wrapping all those books. I REALLY needed to finish the hard edits of the third book in Ed Calkins, Steward of Tara's third book in his BryonySeries Ruthless trilogy - and I wasn't sure if I could get those edits done if I spent every waking minute this weekend on them.

It's been that kind of autumn/2024, ya know? 

So Timothy and Daniel, on their way out the door for their Saturday morning bro-breakfast together, offered to help.

They came home a couple hours later with gift bags, lots of tape - and then Timothy custom-designed large gift tags that would hold all the important information: Gender, age, room number.

And then the boys got busy and started wrapping, making sure that rooms with multiple children didn't get "doubles" with the books.

You should know both boys just completed a busy week at work, along with finals week for their master degree programs. They submitted the final final on Friday night and REALLY looked forward to a quiet, relaxing Saturday.

Instead, they spent the day wrapping one hundred and eighteen books. And then they delivered them.

In the meantime, Rebekah had gone to Cindy's for a Christmas bakeoff since Cindy was making gift boxes of baked goods for presents this year.

Instead, the girls baked all day and then professionally wrapped an assortment of their goodies in individual packs to accompany the books.

That left Cindy without any baked goods for her gift boxes. And she was OK with that.

I should also add we do not even have our Christmas tree up. Heck, it's not even out of the garage yet.

We also have not celebrate St. Nicholas yet (that feast day was Dec. 6).

But I actually DID finish the hard edits on Ed's book late Sunday night.

And Timothy, Rebekah, and Daniel chilled on Sunday.

Most importantly, we brought a bit of Christmas to people who can't bring it to themselves this year. And they can enjoy stories written locally by writers who care about writing good stories and sharing them with the community.

I love the amount of good people can bring into the world when they work together. And social media, for all negativity sometimes associated with it, was the catalyst for it.

Besides we can always bring the Christmas tree out of the garage another day.

Happy Monday!