Happy Holidays!

I can't believe that the holiday season is here! It seems like I was just preparing to start a new job at the Des Plaines Public Library and now it's late December.

In case you missed them, here are a few holiday related articles that library staff have written:

On our Positively Ellinwood blog, Claire wrote about the darker side of the holidays and suggested a few good mystery reads with a holiday slant. The Victorians also loved ghost stories during the holiday season--Dickens' A Christmas Carol being the most famous example. If you do a search for "Christmas Ghost Stories" in Google Books, you will see a number of collections of these stories.

For our Des Plaines Patch column, Gwen wrote about managing holiday stress with conversation. It's a gentle reminder to take time to listen to each other during the holidays. Gwen's post also reminded me of a story I read on the Huffington Post recently. The story talks about how gulf between "what is" and "what we want to be" gets pretty wide during the holiday season.

Finally, I would like to remind you that the library will be closed the following days during the holidays:

Saturday, December 24, 2011 Christmas Eve

Sunday, December 25, 2011 Christmas Day

Saturday, December 31, 2011 New Year’s Eve

Sunday, January 1, 2012 New Year’s Day

Happy Holidays to you and yours from the Des Plaines Public Library!