Louisiana Catholic woman takes book she wrote about Christmas on tour

Published: 2005-12-19

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- At some point, most parents have some explaining to do about Santa. Claire Boudreaux Bateman, a Baton Rouge, La., mom, took her explanation a step further than most parents. Instead of just giving a quick response to her son's questions about why Santa visits on Jesus' birthday, she came up with a detailed story of the friendship between Jesus and Santa. She wrote the story down and before long was reading it to local schoolchildren. During the story's first public debut, at her son's kindergarten class, one student came up to her afterward and asked her if she wrote it and wondered why she didn't staple the pages of her story together. That got Bateman, a parishioner at St. Aloysius Parish in Baton Rouge, thinking not only of finding a way to keep the pages together, but of possibly publishing the story. A teacher at a local Catholic high school put her in touch with a former art student, Hannah Romero, who illustrated it. In 2002 Bateman's story, "How Christmas Began," was published. It costs $18.50 and is available online at www.amazon.com and www.barnesandnoble.com.

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