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"The Wonderful Gift of Yule" began, not as a poem, but a quest by the author to find definitive answers to the questions children so often ask around Christmas time:
As a father and grandfather, I had usually avaided answering most of these questions as parents often do:
However, as can be seen in the accompanying photographs, several years ago I agreed to become "Santa" for a neighborhood school function. My wife, Libby, made these suits for both of us. I even grew a real white beard. Then, "Mrs. Claus" and I began talking with children to learn their views of Christmas and what it means to them. Problems quickly arose, as "Santa" didn't have good answers to many of their questions. A great amount of research followed, both in libraries and the Internet, but not much help was found. Amazingly, in spite of the world-wide recognition of Santa Claus, no cohesive story existed that answered many questions children continually ask. Finally, I sat down, put my "Santa" hat on, and began to go back to that time when I was a child, when rhyme, rhythm and poetry made sense, and magic made sense, too. The result was a story that blends various myths and legends with a simple recognition of the inherent goodness and universality of children. The artwork on these pages was created especially for this work by Patricia Johnson, an artist living in the Seattle area. Welcome to "The Wonderful Gift Of Yule". If you are an adult, we hope this work will provide you with some answers for your child at Christmas. More importantly, we hope it will take you back to that magic time when you, too, knew what was good and right; that time before institutions and conventions swept you up, as it does us all, into the "real" world. And who is to say this isn't the way it happened..... |
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(C) PAUL S. CARR III: 2004 ILLUSTRATIONS BY PATRICIA JOHNSON |
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