This year I wanted to share with you my favorite Christmas
story. In 1994 Berkeley Breathed wrote and illustrated his
father's tale of Christmas on Vashon Island. A story replete with flying dogs, space Nazis and elves - an absolutely true
story of Santa Claus.

I didn't want to just summarize the story, or encourage you to
run out and buy it (although you should), instead I decided to
read it aloud. A bedtime story from me to you.
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During the Depression years, before the second war, my folks would banish me from East Orange, New Jersey, to Michigan for the school year and then ship me to upstate New York for summer camp. The lone remaining month, for Christmas, would find me on a train to my aunt Vy's house, on Vashon, a damp little island somewhere off the country's upper left corner. It was an out/of/the/way corner, but a good place to grow things, where strawberries and sourfaced little boys might ripen up sweeter. Or so my mother told me each time she sent me away.

But on Christmas Eve of 1939, I'd grown no sweeter
at all.

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