Christmas Gifts

In the sometimes hectic days before Christmas, Emily's family appreciates her gifts of caring, sharing, helping, smiling, and loving. Includes a note for parents on how to encourage good manners during the holiday season.

The Christmas story you haven’t read: What happens after Santa Claus delivers all the Christmas presents to boys and girls around the world? Is there a gift waiting for Santa at the North Pole? Has Mrs. Claus forgotten Santa on Christmas Eve? Cuddle up with your little ones and follow the journey through Santa’s Workshop in search of Santa’s Christmas present. With bright and whimsical illustrations, this take on the Christmas story is sure to become a holiday reading tradition—especially at bedtime! Written by John T. Elkins and illustrated by Ag Jatkowska, A Christmas Gift for Santa is: A great holiday season read for ages 4 to 8 A wonderful story filled with love and gratitude Filled with delightful rhyming text that the little ones in your life will want to read again and again Follow Santa as he searches his cozy North Pole home until he finds homemade gifts waiting for him next to a beautiful handwritten note. A Christmas Gift for Santa is great choice for any family to read together during the holiday season.

Mothering is messy. Our joy and hope in raising children doesn’t change the reality that being a mom can be frustrating, stressful, and tiring. But just as God is using us to shape our children, God is using our children and motherhood to shape us. In The Better Mom, author Ruth Schwenk, herself a mother of four children, encourages us with the good news that there is more to being a mom than the extremes of striving for perfection or simply embracing the mess. We don’t need to settle for surviving our kids’ childhood. We can grow through it. With refreshing and heartfelt honesty Ruth emboldens moms to: Find freedom and walk confidently in purpose Create a God-honoring home environment Overcome unhealthy and destructive emotions such as anger, anxiety, and more Avoid glorifying the mess of mom-ing or idolizing perfection Cultivate life-giving friendships At the heart of The Better Mom is the message that Jesus calls us to live not a weary life, but a worthy life. We don’t have to settle for either being apathetic or struggling to be perfect. Both visions of motherhood go too far. Ruth offers a better option. She says, “It’s okay to come as we are, but what we’re called to do and be is far too important to stay there! The way to becoming a better mom starts not with what we are doing, but with who God is inviting us to become."

The adorable hero of Panda’s Easter Basket returns in a new, charming holiday story. It’s the night before Christmas, and Panda can hardly wait till tomorrow to open his presents. He reminds Mama of all the things he’d like: a basketball, a tricycle, a baseball glove, board games. But it’s the gift he least expects--a wooden sailboat that Papa carved just for him--that teaches Panda the true spirit of Christmas.

When young Roland is disappointed by seeing a tiny gift on Christmas morning, he learns that some gifts can't and shouldn't be defined by their physical size.

In this Franklin Classic Storybook, Franklin can't decide what to donate to his school's Christmas toy drive. At first, all of his toys seem too special to give away, then nothing seems special enough. With some inspiration from his Great Aunt Harriet, Franklin finally comes up with the perfect gift.

CHRISTMAS GIFTS brings together three previously published and long out-of-print novellas, each on the theme of Christmas gifts that will last forever because the gift, in essence, is love. In "The Best Christmas Ever" a boisterous house party is in progress and all the children when asked are eager to tell what they want for Christmas. But one man feels sad, for his young child has not spoken since her mother died and he does not know if the gifts he has bought her will be what she really wants. Unknown to him her one fervent wish is for the new mother for Christmas, and when she sees one of the guests she knows who that will be. But the lady concerned has an unhappy history with the child's father. In "The Porcelain Madonna" a gentleman becomes involved with helping an impoverished lady, who thinks of everyone's happiness but her own. However, he has seen her gaze with longing at a porcelain madonna well beyond her means displayed in a shop window. In "The Surprise Party" a man and woman who are antagonistic to each other find themselves landed with the care over Christmas of children who are related to each of them. They quarrel over which of them should undertake the task. It is not a happy situation until the children teach them the true meaning of Christmas and of love and they discover that they can do it together.

Canada's pre-eminent satirical commentator brings down the curtain on his hugely successful show in this instant #1 national bestseller. Rick Mercer startled the nation when in 2017 he announced that the 15th season of Canada’s most-watched and beloved comedy show the Rick Mercer Report would be the last. As this book reminds us, he quit while he was way, way ahead. Final Report includes blisteringly good rants from the final five seasons and some of the very best rants from the show’s early years. And in three brilliant new essays that include a love letter to Parliament Buildings, how Doug Ford became Ontario premier (hint: it had nothing to do with talent) and how he managed not to freak out in the year after the RMR wrapped, Rick, a recipient of a 2019 Governor General’s Performing Arts Lifetime Artistic Achievement Award, reveals himself as a comic writer and entertainer at the very top of his game.