Plugin Question

Hi

I have used WordPress for awhile and am now starting to learn how to write a WordPress plugin.

I was able to get a simple plugin working… where the user can change the Howdy message to something else and this is working.

What I would like to do is to add in 2 other input boxes, one for the user to save a Christmas Message and one for the user’s Birthday. When the current date is equal to one of these 2 dates, the appropriate message will display.

My question is…
where would I save and retrieve these 2 other options from/to?