2017 gifts for Star readers

Gift 1: Make your own electronic postcards – holiday or not

Use our exclusive postcard tool to create a timeless treasure from our artistic trove of photos, illustrations and cartoons by artist Chiara Bautista, cartoonist David Fitzsimmons and Arizona Daily Star photographers.  

Click here to get started on your digital postcard

Gift 2: Coupon for 25% off Arizona Daily Star photo reprints

Use this coupon for 25 percent off reprints of photographs taken by an Arizona Daily Star photographers.

Most staff photographs published in print or online are available for your personal use.

We’ve included several of our favorites as ideas, but you are welcome to choose what you like best from our award-winning photographers.

The deadline for ordering is Dec. 18 if you want your photo reprint by Christmas. And you’ll need to use second-day shipping to receive the photo by Dec. 25. Use coupon code HOLIDAY2017 at checkout for 25 percent off your order, before shipping. 

The coupon expires Dec. 31, 2017, in case you are looking for a really late last-minute gift or a New Year’s present with your holiday cash. Get started at tucson.com/photoreprints

Gift 3: Free access to the Star's archives for subscribers through 2017

On the third day of gifts to our readers, we give you free access to the Arizona Daily Star’s archives dating to 1879. Yes, we first published in 1877, but papers from those first two years are lost.

From now until the end of the year, we invite each and every subscriber to search to their heart’s content through our archive of 2,049,639 newspaper pages, and to do so for free.

Give yourself plenty of time to get lost in our archives, as you can search for most any topic you can imagine.

While the Star is your hometown newspaper, we’ve covered the nation and the world for 140 years. You’ll find the big news of the last century — world wars, presidential elections, the creation of the last of our 50 states — and the small news — weddings, engagements, births of neighborhoods.

Think of five or six things you want to know or find. For example:

• Search for your family name or your address. You might be pleased or appalled.

• Search for your favorite sports team or sports legend, from UA football coach “Pop” McKale to boxer Muhammad Ali.

• Search for your favorite comics. Calvin and Hobbes debuted in the Sunday comics on Feb. 1, 1987.

• Search for your favorite restaurant and see whether it’s still open.

• Search for “Vietnam” and you’ll find 57,173 mentions that include every story and every editorial that ever appeared in the Star.

• Search for “William R. Mathews,” yes, Mathews with one “t.” Mathews was the former editor of the Star who covered the world and was on the USS Missouri when the Japanese surrendered to end World War II.

Go to tucson.com/free-archives to access our archives for free until the end of the year.

Gift 4: Gift tags

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We created these exclusive gifts tags especially for you. This original artwork by cartoonist David Fitzsimmons and artist Chiara Bautista of the Arizona Daily Star cannot be found any where else. 

Gift 5: Family recipes – from ours to yours

On the fifth day of gifts for our readers, we give you three family recipes and a peek into reporter Kathleen Allen’s family traditions. Kathleen is a longtime Tucson newspaper reporter. She covers the arts and gives a voice to the many interesting people who call Tucson home. You’ll find her stories in Caliente and in Home + Life each week.

Christmas morning was too chaotic in our big family.

My poor parents would be up until 4 a.m. or so putting out presents and assembling gifts.

And an hour or so later, I and my nine siblings would rouse them out of bed to see what Santa had left.

After a few years of this, my father decided Santa would come earlier on Christmas Eve and we’d open presents that night. We’d have a light supper, then we kids would go down the hall to play, dad would close the door between the hall and the living room, and a few hours later we’d hear bells ring, a “ho, ho, ho,” the hall door would fly open, and the frantic gift opening began.

After, we would have hot chocolate and discuss what we each got. Ever since, a Christmas Eve does not go by without a cup of hot chocolate. It conjures up memories of so much love and warmth.

My parents are gone now, and my brothers and sisters and I have added a few culinary traditions of our own to our holidays. All these recipes are so popular amongst us that they are in our “Allen Family Cookbook.”

My sister Margaret starts making her Chocolate Orange Drop cookies a few weeks before Christmas. She gives them out as holiday gifts. I’m not sure how she does that — these little cookies are so delectable. When I make them, I seem to eat more than I give. The tradition has now been picked up by our niece Eleanor, who makes them look much prettier than my sister or I ever could.

My sister Patti has taken the hot chocolate recipe to a whole new level and every Christmas Eve when her children were growing up, she would make a batch and they would sit around after gifts were opened and sip.

And for Christmas dinner dessert, I make my almond pound cake. It is moist and rich and very much in demand. And here’s the best part: though it takes lots of sugar and butter and eggs, it’s a breeze to make.

Sure, there’s an overload of sugar here, but these are the holidays. Restraint is not in order. Besides, we can start to walk it off come Jan. 1.

We can’t make these temptations for all of Tucson, but the Star can share the recipes. Consider them our gifts to you. Happy gatherings, happy holidays.

Gift 6: Make your own cards – for any occasion

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Make your own with notecards with these template. You can also buy them pre-made at tucson.com/store for $10 for 12 cards, 2 of 6 different designs. 

Gift 7: Electronic stickers to make your texts, oh so Tucson

On this seventh day of gifts to our readers, we give you electronic stickers to use while texting.

Please note that these stickers are only available for iPhone and iPad devices running iOS 10 or later.

Step 1: Open the App Store app, tap Search and type This is Tucson in the search box, tap Search

Step 2: Tap GET then INSTALL next to the sicker pack you want to install

Step 3: When the stickers have finished installing open the Messages app

Step 4: Start a new message or open an existing conversation

Step 5: Tap the tiny App Store icon to the left of the input box, then choose the stickers you just installed

Your new stickers are ready to use. Tap a sticker to add it to a conversation. Tap and drag additional stickers to layer them.

If you get stuck along the way we created videos of the process which you can watch on http://tucne.ws/rxh

If you are still stuck after watching the video, email Senior Editor Debbie Kornmiller at dkornmiller@tucson.com and she can answer questions. 

The stickers are free through Thursday, Dec. 21. 

Have fun!

Gift 8: Exclusive gift wrap for Arizona Daily Star lovers everywhere

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Each year graphic artist Chiara Bautista creates exclusive gift wrap for Arizona Daily Star readers. If you've wrapped that last gift and still need a bit more,  or if you'd prefer your printer to our printing press, you can download the wrap here. 

Gift 9: 3 free screen saver photos

For the ninth gift to our readers, we give subscribers three iconic screen-saver photos by Arizona Daily Star photographer Kelly Presnell.

Kelly is a six-time National Press Photographers Association Regional Photographer Of The Year and has been recognized in other contests including Best Of The West, National Association Of Hispanic Journalists, NPPA, the Arizona Press Club and the Associated Press. He has worked in Iola, Kansas; Junction City, Kansas; Salina, Kansas; Wichita, Kansas; and Norfolk, Virginia. He has been at the Arizona Daily Star since 2003. He has also been published in the Washington Post, The New York Times Magazine, The Los Angeles Times and The Norfolk Virginian-Pilot.

The photos are free and our gift to you. 

Just go to: http://tucne.ws/rsm and download the zip file. Images are for personal use only.

Gift 10: New York Sun: Is there a Santa Claus? With Fitz video

For the 10th gift to our readers, we give you an exclusive and very Fitz-mas version of "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus."

In his holiday-classic video, "Yes, Tucson, there is a Santa Claus," Fitz lays out the facts as he knows them and pretty much comes to the same conclusion as The Sun in New York did in 1897. 

You can find Fitz's classic holiday reading at tucson.com/fitz-santa

In case you need a refresher, The Sun's editorial is below. We used the original headline and the punctuation from the New York Sun.  

Is there a Santa Claus?  

We take pleasure in answering thus prominently the communication below, expressing at the same time our great gratification that its faithful author is numbered among the friends of THE SUN:

"DEAR EDITOR: I am 8 years old.

"Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.

"Papa says, 'If you see it in THE SUN it's so.'

"Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?

" VIRGINIA O'HANLON.

"115 WEST NINETY-FIFTH STREET."

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except (what) they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, VIRGINIA, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank GOD! He lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

The Sun, New York,

Sept. 21, 1897

Gift 11: The front page of the Star on the day you were born

For this 11th gift to our readers, we give you the front page of the Arizona Daily Star on the day you were born. 

This is our second gift to subscribers using the Star's archives on newspapers.com, both of which you can access through the end of the year. 

Go to tucson.com/front-page and type in your birth date and hit return to download that front page. You can use the calendar there to click on the date or type it in, YYYY-MM-DD. For Arizona's birthday, you'd type in 1912-02-14.

You need to be signed into your subscriber account for this to work. If you aren't signed in, you will be prompted to do so. 

If you encounter a problem or have a question, contact Senior Editor Debbie Kornmiller at dkornmiller@tucson.com

Gift 12: puzzles and games

For this 12 gift of Christmas, we give you puzzles and games to fill you head with all the wonderful things this season offers. Merry Christmas. 

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