Christmas comes early with this snowy issue of Cricket.

’Tis the season to be jolly, but it’s hard for Ladybug to get into the giving spirit until she is visited by a fuzzily familiar Christmas ghost. In “Snow Angel Mittens,” a girl in rural Oregon receives a surprising gift that teaches her the true meaning of Christmas in the midst of the Great Depression.

Have you ever wanted to become an animal photographer? Then you’ll want to read about Richard and Cherry Kearton, two brothers who practically invented nature photography, often hiding “In the Belly of an Ox” and other crazy places to get close to their subjects. You’ll even get a chance to shoot your own photographs of wild nature in this month’s contest.

In the final part of “A Temple Built by Philosophy,” Claudia depends on her own cleverness, and the help of the nearly blind philosopher Lucretius, to save her family from the dangerous world of Rome’s brutal politics. You’ll also be moved the powerful story of Janusz Korczak, “The Champion of Children” who dedicated his life to the care of the poor and orphaned in Warsaw during the Nazi Occupation.

Have you ever noticed how hard it is to keep pairs of socks together? Where all those missing socks disappear to, leaving their mates behind to pine, is one of life’s great mysteries. Find out where only the lonely socks go in “The Village of Left Behinds.”

Don’t be left behind! Read the new issue of Cricket and learn the most important lesson of the holiday season: Never put Ladybug in charge of the gift exchange! Ho! Ho! Ho!