Christmas Eve

Our daughter Eve, a librarian, has won the Mayor’s Rave Review Award “for showing initiative, doing more than expected, focusing on quality, excellence, and customer satisfaction”.

Of Jacksonville’s 10,465 city employees, only a handful have earned this honor.

Mayor John Peyton will present Eve the award she earned at a ceremony at City Hall later in the month.

Meanwhile, Eve is preparing a Christmas In August program for the kids and teens who come to her branch library. Eve’s been getting her Christmas program ready for weeks now. She’s baking cookies and wrapping presents for all the kids who come to her library. (I’m pretty sure she pays for all these extras out of her own pocket). And, a few days ago she called asking Ginny about borrowing musical Santa Claus toys for a display.

Alas, Ginny and I forgot all about it. Christmas In August is not high on our list of things to think about (Ginny stubbed her toe on a chair leg over the weekend and I’ve focused on that over the weekend because with her being a diabetic that could prove serious).

Eve showed up at the door yesterday to pick up Santas for her display. So I began pulling boxes of Christmas decorations out of storage.

About 40 years ago, someone gave Ginny a battery-operated, musical, mechanical Santa that waved its arms ringing a bell. The present delighted her, so every year since the rest of the family and I have often given her additional battery-operated musical Santas.

She owns Santas that climb ladders, Santas that walk, Santas that ski, Santas that fly, Santas that sing calypso music, Elvis in a Santa suit, Santas that drive racecars, that catch fish, that beat drums—and one that drops his pants to moon the world.

A couple of years back, being inundated with musical Santa dolls, Ginny asked for a moratorium on anymore gifts of Santa dolls—she has scores of the things.

In fact, before it became too much of a burden, each year we used to have a Christmas party featuring the annual Running Of The Santas in which she would set every one of the things to playing at the same time!

We spent a fortune on batteries for this spectacle.

Anyhow, yesterday Eve borrowed eight or ten of Ginny’s Santas to show the kids at her library; she says she will take photos to e-mail back to me later this week.

On the down side, at the same time Eve is celebrating and showing initiative and going beyond the call of duty so the Mayor is recognizing her outstanding efforts in community service—at this same time because of the city’s budget crunch, they propose shutting down the library she works at, or at least cutting the hours it is open to only 16 hours a week.

Merry Christmas, Eve.