Dear Visitors:

Occasionally, I receive letters from visitors who are angry or offended because a particular holiday is not included on this site. To reduce misunderstandings, I'm posting the following response.

Many visitors are unaware that The Holiday Zone is a personal homepage, the work of one person. It is not a business or an organization.

Second, it is a hobby, albeit a time-consuming one. The holidays already featured on the list reflect somewhere between 50 and 200 hours of work each just in the initial set-up. Multiply that by all the holidays that are featured, and you're talking about a LOT of time -- and that's without adding in the time it takes to update content, expand it, and make corrections.

In recent years, other aspects of life have taken priority over site maintenance, and a few months ago, I came very close to closing the site down altogether for this very reason. Then, I discovered that without so much as a single update, The Holiday Zone had netted more than half a million visitors -- more than 2.5 million hits -- in the past year. More than a little stunned, I decided that perhaps the site was worth keeping alive -- and not just keeping alive, but once again actively maintaining and expanding.

I'm now in the process of working through the existing content, with upcoming holidays taking priority over those that are still a few months away. I'm also adding new content on an almost weekly basis.

If you've visited The Holiday Zone, only to find that the holiday in which you're interested is not featured or has only minimally featured, please don't take offense. Instead, lend a hand! Submit your favorite craft activities, language activities, games, coloring pages, songs, and links. Submitted material will generally be added within a couple of weeks, and full credit will be given to the submitter on all submitted materials.

Should you find mistakes on the site, please also take time to e-mail me, and I'll correct these as soon as possible.

Sincerely,
Julie Vickery-Smith
Webmaster
webmaster@theholidayzone.com