Local author shares a Christmas miracle
Of Inspired by daughter’s love, local author shares a Christmas miracle on Lindbergh Mountain
Patricia Gallagher created a story about a family who moved to an unheated cabin on Lindbergh Mountain.
Call it a Christmas miracle. It was 1996 when celebrated author/speaker/coach Patricia Mohan Gallagher’s nine-year-old daughter came to her and said that someone at school told her that Santa Claus wasn’t real. This brought tears to Gallagher’s eyes.
Though she knew her daughter, Kristen, had recently stopped believing that Santa was real, she couldn’t bear the thought that there were other children who did still believe in him but were being told by someone else that he wasn’t real.
What happened next during that conversation brought tears to her eyes for a second time. But for a whole different reason.
“Kristen was more worried about her little brother overhearing something like that at school than anything else.” Gallagher’s youngest child, Ryan, was six years old and still believed. “She said to me, ‘Mom, no one should be told Santa Claus isn’t real, and I especially don’t want Ryan hearing that.’”
Motivated by her daughter’s kind heart, she decided she wouldn’t allow this to be reality for him. Or for any other child.
She decided to devise a way for the fantasy and the magic to continue. And she wanted to make it real. Gallagher and her older daughter, Katelyn, 12, brainstormed ways so that, ac-cording to Kristen, “Ryan would always keep believing.” Gallagher became inspired to create a way for the countless children who had been told Santa didn’t exist to come back to believing in him.
And in the miracle of Christmas.
On the car ride home from a family excursion that year to a local Christmas village, Gallagher started making up a story about a family who loved their home on Holly Hill Road but unforeseen circumstances forced them to move to an unheated cabin on Lindbergh Mountain. Why Lindbergh Mountain? “We passed a road by that name so I just made that location part of my fictional story. I passed another road called Chinquapin so that became part of the story, too.”
The story continued to grow and take shape for the next few days. “Katelyn and I added details to the story. We sat at the computer in our laundry room and typed it up. She suggested that we make it like a Touch and Feel storybook, so we bought trinkets from our local variety and thrift stores. We made all kinds of little things that would go along with the story.”
That’s how “Santa Clues” was born.
“I wanted to create something magical for kids and for their parents to share together and even pass down from generation to generation” Gallagher said. She believed her “homemade” touch and feel books could connect children with Santa while connecting them with their parents as they shared this sensory experience.
As a mother and former elementary school teacher Gallagher was well aware of the benefits of children reading with their parents — and not just the well-documented positive impact on their language, intelligence, cognitive development and writing skills — but on the innate and invaluable impact of bonding, warmth and creating cherished memories. All this, and all the while sharing with them the fundamental message of the book — heart, selflessness and love.
The story itself takes place at
Christmas time on fictional Lindbergh Mountain. Main character Kristen lives there with her family and is worried Santa wouldn’t be able to find their old run-down cabin on Lindbergh Mountain due to a dangerous storm brewing on Christmas Eve.
“The whole idea of creating this Christmas time treasure hunt was magical to me and I wanted to share it with a whole new generation of parents,” she said. Gallagher’s “Santa Clues” bags included a burlap sack containing all the clues to find Santa himself. Ten “clues” included reindeer fur and pennies sprayed in gold which parents could spread around the house as their child went on a magical treasure hunt to find St. Nick.
She even went a step further. Her beloved Uncle Ed gifted his niece with a full Santa suit. Gallagher donned the gear as a good Santa’s helper would. She had photos taken of her feeding reindeer at a nearby rein-deer farm to add to the authenticity of book.
Then she decided to turn her story into an actual paperback book. She spent about a thousand dollars of her own money to get it
printed and bound at a local office supply store.
She thought children’s hospitals, and even prisons, would be interested in her idea. “The children’s hospitals were concerned that the items in the bag posed
a choking hazard to children,” she said. “I thought offering my “Santa Clues” to prisons would be a great way for these incarcerated men and women to bond and connect when their children came to
visit them during the holidays.”
But her offer was met with a resounding “no” from that avenue as well. “According to them,” Gallagher remembers, “that was something that was just not part of their format within the prison.”
But she wouldn’t give up on her idea. She firmly believed in the notion of tradition and sharing and keeping the spirit of Christmas alive by handing down stories from one generation to the next.
Then in 2011 inspiration struck again. She decided to turn her paperback into an audio book and hired a professional actress to read it and a sound engineer to dub in sounds to make the book come alive.
Now, in keeping with the spirit of this giving season, she wants to give her beloved story to a whole new generation of families. And she believes now is the perfect time to do just that.
“With the holidays approaching and the pandemic forcing us all to have no contact with our families, I thought this was a great time for families to revisit Christmas on Lindbergh Mountain.”
On her website, Gallagher not only makes her story available to download, she also gives users a list of 100 family fun activities. They can download the ebook and also listen to the heartwarming “Christmas on Lindbergh Mountain” story in its entirety.
That alone can be considered a Christmas miracle to parents struggling to continually come up with ideas to entertain their children during a holiday season in the middle of a pandemic. And the best part? It’s all free.
In addition, Gallagher’s website offers a contest with the prize being a visit from the author to the winning classroom or library.
“I want to keep family traditions alive — even now when we can’t be physically with our loved ones over the holidays, we can connect virtually and keep the spirit of the holidays moving forward, whether together or at a distance.”
Gallagher and her own family have been sharing the tradition of this story together since its inception in 1996.
And it all started with her own children.
“My children are all grown now with families of their own. This story has been a cher-ished part of our holiday tradition all these years. Now I not only get to share it with my children, but with my grandchildren, as well. It’s really family bonding at its best.”
Don’t miss out on getting your very own Christmas miracle.
Visit Gallagher’s website for free downloads for family fun activities and a chance to enter the drawing at www.lindberghmountain.com.
Debra Stella Ludwig is a freelance writer who is the author of the forthcoming book, The Goodbye Gift, which is about finding the gratitude in your grief. She re-sides with her husband and daughter in Pipersville, Pa. She can be reached at seeingthesigns@yahoo.com; website: thegoodbyegift.com