The Year Mother Christmas Delivered the Presents

By Jed Collins
$2.99 Rating: Not yet rated.
Published: Nov. 30, 2011
Words: 69319 (approximate)
Language: English

Short description

Mother Christmas delivers the presents and she doesn’t like what she finds. The spirit of Christmas has been lost, now it’s all about the money. So Mother changes things, she redistributes presents, sits down and has a talk with a mom. But these changes have unforeseen consequences and, on the sledge, the whole team has to pull together to save not only their own lives but Christmas itself.

Extended description

The Bethlehem shepherd Moshe bar Jacob brought the first present to a child born in a stable and lying in a manger. 2000 years later he’s still around, but you probably know him better as Father Christmas. Only now, he delivers 1 billion presents to 500 million children in a single night. To help him he has the world’s best cargo delivery crew. Elf scientists build the sledge, plan the route and sing it to the reindeer. The gnome cargo team handles those one billion presents and delivers them on deck, in the right order, at the right time. And thirteen reindeer haul the sledge round the world in a night that lasts 31 hours. They call this journey The Way.
Father Christmas attends a meeting of the Order of Beneficent Beings in Hawaii and comes back with influenza. He is too ill to be the Gift Bearer, so Mother Christmas takes his place on the sledge.
And Mother does not like what she finds. The first presents were gifts of love, but now only the number and cost of the presents seem... (Read more) The Bethlehem shepherd Moshe bar Jacob brought the first present to a child born in a stable and lying in a manger. 2000 years later he’s still around, but you probably know him better as Father Christmas. Only now, he delivers 1 billion presents to 500 million children in a single night. To help him he has the world’s best cargo delivery crew. Elf scientists build the sledge, plan the route and sing it to the reindeer. The gnome cargo team handles those one billion presents and delivers them on deck, in the right order, at the right time. And thirteen reindeer haul the sledge round the world in a night that lasts 31 hours. They call this journey The Way.
Father Christmas attends a meeting of the Order of Beneficent Beings in Hawaii and comes back with influenza. He is too ill to be the Gift Bearer, so Mother Christmas takes his place on the sledge.
And Mother does not like what she finds. The first presents were gifts of love, but now only the number and cost of the presents seems to count. The Gift Bearer’s role has been degraded to a parcel delivery service with schedules and targets. Somewhere along the way, the spiritual dimension of Christmas has been lost. So Mother changes The Way; she redistributes presents, sits down and has a talk with a mom.
But all this takes time, and the elves hide a dark secret. The sledge is a mini-universe trapped in a wooden sledge which will explode in sunlight, and dawn is near.
When the team leader is injured, it falls to young reindeer Trey, a kid whose only interest so far has been hanging out with his friends and jumping 360’s, to use all his skills to get the sledge home and save The Way.

Parents/Teachers: The Year Mother Christmas Delivered The Presents reconnects Christmas to its origins in Bethlehem. The story will engage children with its broad range of characters, an intriguing storyline, and a plot that increases in pace as the story progresses.
Through the story they will learn something about world geography, science, and other peoples and cultures. These can be used as themes for personal or class study. Through the characters, it emphasizes the core values and core character traits that all our children need to possess to succeed.
It introduces them to the different ways and dates on which we celebrate Christmas and the different presents children around the world receive.
It explores time zones, the International Date Line, and how one night can last for 31 hours. In simple terms, it introduces concepts of time, space and the physics of a universe.
Through the characters, it emphasizes the values of study, preparation, training, and application. It shows how our young hero, Trey, fails repeatedly yet persists and finally achieves his goal.
It shows how the characters deal with their personality failings (such as Trey’s tendency to show off), dysfunctional family backgrounds, and physical limitations; it emphasizes the positive role of family, friendship and faith in dealing with these.
It presents positive role models from the world of work and emphasizes the value of teamwork. It shows the importance of every occupation, no matter how menial, in contributing to the overall success of the team and providing satisfaction to the individual. It reaffirms the spiritual value of work and the sense of wholeness this brings.
The overall theme of the novel is change - personal change, family change, organizational change, technological change - and shows how the characters deal with it.
The grade reading average is 4 to 5. Only one chapter – when an elf explains to Father Christmas the physics of loading one million tons of cargo into a small, wooden sledge – is a grade 5.5. The total word count is 68,800, which equates to 275 pages for an average sized paperback.
You can read the first 20% of the book here,and see if you think this story is suitable for your child or class.
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Tags

santa claus, reindeer, father christmas, bethlehem, christmas book, christmas adventure, christmas story for kids, mother christmas

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