Before Christmas Press is a cooperative effort of the Hays family--Steve and Barbara, and our children Shelley and David. The press came about as a result of Steve's curmudgeonliness: he has been writing for many years, but he is too cranky and individualistic to find an agent or a publisher. So, in one of his periodic fits of madness, he filled the house with expensive equipment and declared us open for business.
- Steve serves as our senior technician and junior web lackey and spends a few hours before dawn most mornings on writing and layouts.
- Barb, our VP for Common Sense, endures Steve's obsessions, helps to pay off the equipment, and solves logistical problems such as remembering to go to the post office.
- Shelley, who is a professional editor for a company that actually makes money and pays its staff, serves as our Editor-in-Chief and Assistant Propagandist.
- Chester and Lucy are our Directors of Internal Security.
- Tucker and Sumo oversee External Security.
- David, who is studying for an M.B.A. at Ohio State, is our Chief Economic Critic (C.E.C.) and keeps mumbling about something called a "business plan." His wife Cintia, an engineer at Honeywell, is our Lean Expert in charge of Chocolate and Footwear Acquisitions.
Our loftiest financial ambition is that someday we will make enough to pay operating expenses and maybe even pay off the equipment. In fact, though, we did not set up Before Christmas Press to make money, but to challenge and encourage people with honest books on important topics.
We have chosen the name "Before Christmas" to evoke the wonderful, resolute hope that permeates the texts of such visionary thinkers as Plato and C.S. Lewis, who acknowledged the terrifying power of ignorance and evil in the world, but remained quietly confident that good must ultimately win out. In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the Witch's apparently endless winter suggests the possibility that brute fact, brute force, and death might be the final word. Lewis captures that possibility in Tumnus' challenge: "Always winter and never Christmas; think of that." Lucy contemplates the idea and responds as all the heroes, idealists, and reformers in human history have done: "How awful!" she exclaims, and she joins the strange and varied creatures of Narnia who defy the Witch in the hope that justice, mercy, and love are too strong to be repressed forever--that the sorrows of winter must someday yield to the joys of "Christmas."
Things have gotten pretty wintery in our world the last few years. It's hard to know how to respond. Some people sink into the cynical view that "winter" is too strong to resist. Others submerge themselves in irrational mysticism or authoritarian religion. We at Before Christmas Press aim instead at resolute hope sustained and critiqued by honest inquiry. We may miss the target, but that's what we're aiming at.
Peace to all,
the Hays family