As Christmas draws near, I thought I’d share some fun online sites you might like to share with your children this holiday season. Of course a quick Google search will yield you thousands of results, but here are a few I’ve enjoyed with my kids.

My 4 year old especially likes these. For him as a child that is growing up with on-demand video and the internet, it seems only natural to incorporate some of what Santa does online.

• Countdown to Christmas features a daily video message from Santa, and a chance to ask St. Nick questions in real time.
• Santa Update features daily “press releases” from the North Pole keeping everyone up to date on the days leading up to Christmas Eve.
• Portable North Pole lets you create a custom video greeting from Santa featuring your child’s name, photo, and location, a sneak-peek at the Naughty/Nice List, and even an update on the toy the wished for.
• Santa Live features live webcams from inside Santa’s office, and outside the workshop.
• NORAD Tracks Santa is the granddaddy of them all and features real-time tracking of Santa, with video updates and a Google Earth option. You can also follow the Twitter Stream, Facebook Page, and Picasa Web Album. If you are an On-Star user, you can even get hourly updates in your vehicle on Christmas Eve.
• Track Santa on your mobile device – Google Maps offers NORAD’s Santa Tracking on supported phones.

Merry Christmas!

(CC licensed image via The Sierra Club)

For 53 years, NORAD has been tracking Santa’s trips from the North Pole and around the world and providing up to the minute updates on his deliveries. This year you and your children can track Santa with NORAD by visiting NORAD Track Santa where you will find real-time updates on Santa’s position, videos from his stops in various cities, and the option to track him with Google Earth in 3D.

We have our Santa tracker already set up and are watching him make his way from the other side of the globe to our house. I hope he remembers to stop!

In a recent post, Moonrat (ok, so I feel silly typing that) discusses what went wrong with the publishing industry in October, 2008 -  lamenting the returns issues we publisher face, and offers a suggestion on how book lovers can make a difference.

I don’t think anyone’s being really straightforward about what exactly happened, and a lot of it is not very complicated.* The crux of the problem is that book publishing is a returnable industry. That means that say Big Chain Store (BCS) agrees to stock a book that my company publishes. They buy 100 copies at, say, $1 a piece (to be easy). They give me $100; I send them the books. Two months later, they didn’t sell any, so they send them back. I have to give them $100.

Keep in mind a couple of things about this system that don’t work in the publisher’s favor:
1) Shipping costs. Books are heavy.
2) Production fees incurred by the publisher (because, unfortunately, we can’t return the books to the printer).
3) Inflation. Haha.

Like many other industries, book sellers are getting hit hard by our current economy – but the Holiday season is upon us, so things should improve, right?

However, BCS and all its chain compatriots are counting on Christmas sales to save them. They need to stock up! They need to plump their stores with new enticing merchandise so they can convince customers to save them from foreclosure!

Where to get the cash for all the holiday books they needed to stock in October and November? Three. Guesses.

In October, bookstores returned so many books that most publishing companies had more coming into them than going out of them. For some companies, the incoming number was more than several months’ outgoing.

So, what to do? Moonrat has some great advice.

For anyone who cares about the book publishing industry and wants to do their part, there’s one simple action step:

Buy a book this weekend.

Just buy one.

Perfect idea.

Read more of Moonrat’s publishing blog at http://editorialass.blogspot.com/

(Photo credit: _mpd_)

Dear Editor—

I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, “If you see it in The Sun, it’s so.” Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?

Virginia O’Hanlon

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The external light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies. You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if you did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart. Only faith, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

More about this famous letter.