San Diego nurse and mother of two Janessa Ferreira, writing under the name Nessa Rose, is the author of A Gift for Santa Claus: A Christmas Tradition, a new rhyming children's picture book that flips one of Christmas morning's most familiar questions on its head. Instead of asking what Santa is bringing them, what if children stopped to wonder: Who gives a Christmas present to Santa?
The idea came directly from Ferreira's daughter last Christmas. Her 3 year old had received the present she wanted most when she looked at her mother and asked a question Ferreira wasn't expecting.
"Does Santa Claus get gifts for Christmas too?"
Rather than simply answering her daughter, Ferreira's family decided to do something about it. They made Santa a present of his own and left it beside the traditional milk and cookies on Christmas Eve.
What began as a spontaneous family moment stuck with Ferreira. Over the following nine months, she transformed the idea into A Gift for Santa Claus, a 34 page illustrated children's book published this summer under the name Nessa Rose. The book was released July 14 through Ever Rose Publishing.
The premise is deliberately simple, but its message goes considerably further than Santa's annual trip down the chimney.The rhyming story takes children on a search for Christmas magic, encouraging small acts of kindness along the way. Eventually, the child discovers presents beneath the Christmas tree for everyone except Santa and decides to make something for him.
The handmade present is placed alongside Santa's milk and cookies on Christmas Eve. By Christmas morning, Santa has taken the gift and left something behind: a letter praising the child's kindness and revealing that the Christmas magic they had been searching for was inside them all along.
Ferreira hopes the story can establish a new ritual for families in which children make Santa a present every year, shifting at least a little of the excitement surrounding Christmas from "What am I getting?" to "What can I give?"
The book's official website encourages children to draw, paint, sculpt, decorate an ornament or create virtually anything they can imagine. There is intentionally no "correct" present for Santa.
But Ferreira has another idea for what happens to those presents that children don't know about. Parents can quietly save them.
Year after year, a drawing, ornament, letter or tiny handmade creation intended for Santa can become a collection documenting a child's life. Then, someday, when that child grows old enough to understand who was really creating the Christmas magic all those years, their parents can return the entire collection. The book's website suggests families use that moment to evolve the tradition rather than end it, inviting older children to continue creating Christmas magic for other people.
For Ferreira, the emphasis on kindness and finding light in unexpected places was not merely a children's book concept. She was writing it while struggling through one of the most difficult periods of her own life.
Ferreira said she was dealing with postpartum depression and anxiety following the birth of her son when, approximately one week after giving birth, her mother was diagnosed with a rare and incurable blood cancer. Suddenly, an ICU nurse accustomed to caring for people during some of the worst moments of their lives was confronting an intensely difficult period within her own family. Working on the Christmas story gave her somewhere positive to direct her energy.
"I created it during one of the hardest seasons of my life," Ferreira told SanDiegoVille. "Working on a story rooted in kindness and Christmas joy gave me something meaningful to pour myself into during that time."
The result became more than the book itself. Ferreira has built an entire activity around its central idea, including craft kits children can use to make gifts for Santa, with ornament projects and a clay craft kit among the options currently offered. Her website describes the tradition in three basic steps: read the story, create a gift and leave it for Santa on Christmas Eve.
And what started inside one San Diego family's home last Christmas is about to get a much larger local introduction. Ferreira has spent recent months taking the book to community events around San Diego County, with appearances scheduled to continue through the holiday season at some of the region's biggest seasonal gatherings.
Her current calendar includes the Carlsbad Village Street Faire on November 1, Encinitas Holiday Street Fair on November 22 and San Diego Made Holiday Market at Liberty Station on November 28 and 29. She is also scheduled for Balboa Park's December Nights on December 4 and 5 and the Makers Arcade Holiday Fair at Broadway Pier on December 12 and 13.
The San Diego Made Holiday Market alone is expected to bring more than 130 local makers to NTC Park at Liberty Station over Thanksgiving weekend, with food, live music and family activities accompanying the locally focused shopping event. For Ferreira, those appearances will mark the first holiday season in which the tradition her daughter accidentally started is being shared with other families.
There is something particularly fitting about the book emerging from San Diego. Ferreira spends her professional life in intensive care, a setting where compassion is less an abstract virtue than part of the job. At home, she was simultaneously navigating new motherhood, postpartum struggles and devastating news about her own mother.
Then a 3 year old asked who was taking care of Santa. That question became an idea about empathy. The idea became a family tradition. The tradition became a book.
And now Ferreira hopes other children will wake up Christmas morning almost as excited to discover whether Santa took the present they made for him as they are to see what he left for them. It may also give parents something increasingly rare as their children grow older: a tangible record of Christmases that would otherwise exist only in photographs and memories.
A crooked ornament made by a 4 year old. A drawing from kindergarten. A letter written in uneven elementary school handwriting. A handmade present that seemed insignificant at the time but becomes priceless years later.
That's ultimately the magic Ferreira hopes families will find in A Gift for Santa Claus. Not another thing beneath the tree. The realization that sometimes the best part of Christmas is being the person who put something there.
A Gift for Santa Claus: A Christmas Tradition is available through Ferreira's official website at agiftforsantaclaus.com.
Originally published October 10, 2026.
A Gift for Santa Claus: A Christmas Tradition is available through Ferreira's official website at agiftforsantaclaus.com.
Originally published October 10, 2026.