Local author writes about holiday bliss

Candice Smith, a librarian at Stanhope Valley Road School has written two books celebrating the holiday seasons.

A former high school and middle school history teacher, Smith credits her time in the classroom with honing her skills as an interviewer, a writer, a radio personality, an editor, and an author. In addition to being a book author, Smith is currently school librarian at Stanhope Valley Road School. She’s hard at work on her third book due in January 2020. That book goes back to her racing roots.

Smith’s first book is entitled Christmas Candi: A Guide to Year-round Holiday Bliss. It’s a collection of essays, menus, recipes, gift guides, advice, tips, and feel-good reads that takes the reader from the start of Autumn and pumpkin picking through New Year’s. She’s packed in scenarios for every reader and offers beautiful solutions to dilemmas.

She's also written a "The Man Behind the Beard," about Pat Ficcio, a Mt. Arlington man who played Santa Clause for 70 years.What started as a recount of Ficcio’s life as Santa turned into a memoir that spans the Depression, World War II, a stint in the United States Army in Germany, a trip to Italy, a childhood in Newark, NJ, raising a child in Chatham, and the good works of Ficcio and his wife Camille, his Mrs. Claus, for the last 20 years.

Both Christmas Candi: A Guide to Year-round Holiday Bliss (2018) and The Man Behind the Beard (2019) are available on Amazon. Visit their Facebook pages at; Facebook.com/ChristmasCandi187 and Facebook.com/santabeardless.