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Saraclaus

Why I wrote this book!

Dr. Robert Spalding

1225 Taft Hwy Signal Mt., TN 37377
423-756-3668, rts9999999@aol.com

What I Did On My Christmas Vacation

You may wonder why I wrote this book and how I decided to make flying pigs and Mrs. Claus the heroes of a traditional Christmas story. It’s all because I took my wife to a hardware store.

It started like this:

It was Thanksgiving evening when we went out shopping to pick our annual Christmas tree. We usually get a Fraser fir because I’m partial to its soft needles and lovely scent. Anyway, as we ambled through the store’s aisles of pretty decorations, my wife looked up to find this—this THING—that is strange and out of place and completely ridiculous.

It was a three-foot-tall, pink flying pig with white electric flapping wings and a green Christmas wreath covered in white mini-lights. Of course, my wife fell in love with it instantly. I tried to explain that we didn’t need a giant flying pig decoration, and as we were discussing it, another couple saw it and bought it. It was the last one in the store. Uh-oh. Now I was in the dog house. As everybody knows, when you can’t have something, it makes you want it even more. I was going to have to find a flying pig, and fast.

No stores in my area had any left. I called another shop an hour away that did have one, and I was told if I came really early the next morning they would save it for me. Of course, the next morning is Black Friday, the craziest shopping day of the entire year, and a day you would normally never find me within a hundred miles of any kind of shopping mall. But at five a.m., there I stood with the rest of the nutty early-bird shoppers, waiting for the doors to open so I could buy a flying pink pig.

After spending hours back home trying to assemble this pig, I finally gave in and looked at the instructions. I’ll bet your dad does the same thing, doesn’t he? We like to think we can figure directions out by ourselves. I finally put it together the right way, and bring it inside proudly to show my wife. We plug it in beside the Christmas tree—it lights up and the wings slowly begin to flap. It’s kind of cool. Then my wife says she wouldn’t want it to be stolen, so we’d better keep it inside. Did I mention this pig is huge?

It takes up a big part of my living room. So now I’m going to have to look at a large, three foot tall, bright pink flying pig every day for the entire holiday season?! When I realized my wife was indeed serious, I thought to myself, “There is a story here somewhere!” And there was.

When I began my story about life in the North Pole, I couldn’t ignore the fact that the glaciers are really melting and that must be a serious problem for Santa and the gang. Luckily I made sure there were other workshops around the world that could help out with toy orders.

One of my favorite soft drinks has always been Vernor’s Ginger ale, and I was having one over Christmas when I noticed that there is actually an elf cousin—a gnome—on the bottle. His name is Woody. I knew right away that Santa’s elves would love to make their own homemade ginger ale, so I made sure Woody worked at that soda pop factory. Do you remember reading about him?

I also wondered how Santa managed to get all those jobs done by himself, and then realized of course he must have lots of help from Mrs. Claus. The more I thought about it, the more I understood that Mrs. Claus was far more important to the valuable work at the North Pole than most people believed. Such a woman needed her very own story, and that’s how Sara Claus was born, so to speak. Unfortunately, I had to give poor old Santa the flu and the wonderful reindeer had to get deer mites so that you could read about the adventures of Sara Claus and the flying pigs. Please know they are all feeling much better now.

So that’s what I did over my Christmas vacation, and I’m happy to have a new book called Sara Claus that you can order online. Please visit www.SaraClaus.com at any time to say hello.

I guess you just never know what happens when your wife makes you buy a flying pig for Christmas.

(I wonder what she’ll ask for next year!)

Dr. Robert Spalding