F--Past; C--Yet to come (hey, look at the name, for god's sake! I'm thinking he'll never make it there); M--Present (loves to live)

Now I'm picturing a rumble between Catholic and Methodist missionary gangs. "This is our turf, Papists!"

Ha! I was seeing them haggle like my grandmother used to at the flea market. "Okay, I'll let you have those dozen souls if I can just get that one biggie over there."

"Two dozen!"

Dozen-and-a-half."

"Deal."

The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come

There's a joke in here somewhere....

And I'm the first one to go there.

Raised Irish-Catholic, I was and still am surprised when I see anti-Catholic sentiments. There were probably more Catholics in my school, but Protestants were an almost-equal-sized group, so we didn't view anyone as The Other, except for the Mormon and Jewish families, who were appreciated more for the differences than something to be feared, I think.

I know that we thought that the Wilsons, the Mormons down the block, had a good thing going with their Family Night (one night where the family spent the evening together without TV), which they told us was dictated by their church as a way to foster family bonds. And the Jewish boys would explain Chanukah and bar mitzvahs, and we'd play with the dreidel, which was probably a big no-no at a public school, but we learned a lot about each other's faiths.

No Limit Texas Dreidel

The origin of the whole "NORAD tracking Santa" thing: Military center tracking Santa's sleigh ride

NORAD's holiday tradition can by traced to 1955, when a Colorado Springs newspaper printed a Sears, Roebuck & Co. ad telling children of a phone number to talk to Santa. The number was one digit off, and the first child to get through reached the Continental Air Defense Command, NORAD's predecessor.

Col. Harry W. Shoup answered.

Shoup's daughter, Terri Van Keuren, said her dad, now 91, was surprised to hear that the little voice on the other end thought he was Santa.

"Dad thought, `What the heck? This must be some kind of code,'" said Van Keuren, 59.

Shoup, described by his daughter as "just a nut about Christmas," didn't want to break the boy's heart, so he sounded a booming "Ho, ho, ho!" and pretended to be Santa Claus.

Enough calls followed that Shoup assigned an officer to answer them while the problem was fixed. But Shoup and the staff he was directing to "locate" Santa on radar ended up embracing the idea. NORAD picked up the tradition when it was formed 50 years ago.

"If we didn't do it, truly I don't know who else would track Santa," Maj. Stacia Reddish said.

The task that began with no computers and only a 60-by-80-foot glass map of North America now includes two big screens on a wall showing the world and information on each country Santa Claus visits. It took off with the Web site's 1997 launch, Reddish said.

I've never tried No Limit Texas Dreidel, but it looks interesting. The traditional dreidel game really makes no sense -- somebody will just about always win within about six turns. I've seen a few revisions of the rules to try to make it last a bit longer.

Scottish are supposed to be cheap

We prefer to think of it as being frugal.

I just asked my mom her opinion on the Christmas specials. She said that the only one that she has to watch each year is Miracle on 34th Street, and that any Charlie Brown anything we watched was because of our dad. Which doesn't help much for figuring out any sort of rationale. She had no idea that Charlie Brown Christmas even mentioned Jesus. I think I'll ask my dad when he gets home.

(My mom grew up in a city with a pretty small Jewish population, and in her family, they didn't have a Christmas tree or anything, but they did hang up stockings for Santa. My dad grew up in NY, and didn't do any of that stuff. My sister and I never had stocking or Santa or any of that -- it was just accepted that "Jews don't do that." There was one Jewish kid in my grade whose family put up a Chanukah tree, but we all teased her about it -- like, I remember once, when we were arguing something about Jewish traditions, and she offered what her family did, another Jewish girl responded, "You don't count -- your family has a Chanukah bush.")

"You don't count -- your family has a Chanukah bush."

Heh. Love the phrase "Chanukah bush."