This is the time of the year when we hear a lot about Santa Claus, A.K.A. Saint Nicholas, Father Christmas, and Kris Kringle. They are all the same guy but go by different names, which is a felony in most places.

It’s a good gig to be Santa but what do we really know about this man? We trust him to enter our homes while we are sleeping and leave gifts, and he trusts us too. How many times have you been warned against accepting food from strangers, yet we leave cookies and milk for Santa and he scarfs them down like he hasn’t eaten in weeks.

Things like this make me wonder about Santa and since I have time to think about this kind of stuff, I researched the background of Santa Claus and discovered some interesting facts as well as many unanswered questions. Here is my white paper on

“Claus, the man, the myth, the music.”

Santa Claus was born to Ed and Lillian Claus in the early 19th century. He joined his brothers Subordinate and Insanity Claus; and his sister Bear Claus. They were a happy family who enjoyed funny names.

In his teens, Santa realized that he was not like the other kids because he had a full white beard. So he didn’t socialize with his peers but chose to hang out with the elves. Santa and the elves developed a friendship in shop class where he noticed their proficiency in cranking out toys as good as they made in China. He told Bilbo, the king of the elves, to gather his people together and bring them to Santa’s garage where they could make toys for no pay.

In no time at all, nimble elfin fingers created hundreds of dolls, wagons, and things that could put an eye out. When the warehouse was full, Santa asked the elves what they should do next.

At this point, an elf named Danny Devito suggested that since Christmas was coming up, Santa could give the toys away to good little girls and boys. Santa was hoping to turn a profit on the toys but agreed to give them away as long as the elves agreed not to unionize.

Flying reindeer were cutting edge in aero-technology at the time and Santa figured that harnessing eight of them together would enable him to circle the globe in one night, giving away toys as he went.  He bought eight used deer from Reindeer Facts and got a good sleigh on Craig’s List. Then he added a lead reindeer with a glowing radioactive nose to scare away sleigh-jackers.

Finally, the elves loaded the toys in the sleigh and sent Santa off into space with his reindeer while they partied at the North Pole with Mrs. Claus and lots of egg nog.

Santa has continued this Christmas tradition every year even though it would be much more efficient for him to use FedEx. Let’s face it, Santa’s an old man by now, and dashing around the world in an open sleigh has got to be physically demanding. Better he should stick to manufacturing and outsource the distribution, but that’s in the future.

What I have reported took place in the past and is, to the best of my knowledge, exactly how things happened.

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If you’re like me, you have little voices in your head that constantly tell you what to do. Lately I haven’t been listening to them because they have been telling me to “Go Christmas shopping.” This is disturbing because Christmas shopping is something I know I have to do but I really hate it. It’s like a holiday colonoscopy.

Since I have a black belt in procrastination, I delay my shopping until the last possible minute. If you’re a postponer too, pay attention to the following tips and avoid last minute shopping panic syndrome.

1. Stay clear of the mall. It will be packed with everybody who waited until the last minute to do their shopping. Instead, head to the stores with the shortest lines. Go to the Laundromat and get some of those little boxes of detergent. Great as stocking stuffers.

2. Food is a great last minute gift but by now all of the nice gift baskets are gone so you’ll have to make your own. I suggest starting with a bucket of chicken. It’s warm, it’s aromatic, and it comes in a festive container. To complete the basket, add beer. I suggest a 12 pack to remind us of the 12 Days of Christmas.

3. Jerky is a good last minute gift because it is available in gas stations. You can fill up the tank on Christmas morning and stock up on dried beef shards for the whole family. Cans of motor oil and lottery tickets are also available here.

4. Everybody loves cold hard cash but cash, as we all know, is expensive. I suggest to go to your bank or the airport and have your U.S. currency turned into Japanese yen. At an exchange rate of 82 to 1, you can give somebody a 500 yen note for six bucks.

5. If you have 15 people on your list, buy 15 of the same thing. For instance, everybody, young and old, enjoys a nice soup ladle. Kids play with it, adults use it in the kitchen, and grandpa can use it to hold his daily supply of pills. Buy 15 soup ladles and your shopping is done, PLUS, you might get a volume discount.

6. If none of these ideas work for you and you are still in need of a gift, consider the gift of performance art. Recite a poem or act out a scene for you loved one and they will be awed. Here is a simple poem you can memorize and use if you don’t have time to shop.

• There once was a Santa in Nantucket
• Who was late but just couldn’t duck it.
• He finally brought gifts,
• Please come, take a whiff.
• It’s chicken that comes in a bucket.

Merry Christmas.

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In this festive time of the year, I enjoy the ubiquitousness of holiday decorations, but first a word about the word holiday. Christmas is designated as a holiday and spelled as such, however more and more retailers want to celebrate the holly-days, a more secular expression of the season. I suggest that we come to an agreement on this issue and call this time the holidays. If you want to have holly-days You can pretty much pick any date in January.

That said, Christmas is the perfect time to adorn your house and yard with all varieties of lights, animatronics, and mechanical characters. Lights are displayed in a variety of ways. Some people use lights to outline their house while others decorate their trees with festive twinklers. Some people prefer a variety of light colors while others stick to a one color policy.

Modern lights are very easy to use, inexpensive to operate, and give off no heat. When I was growing up we decorated our house with strings of C-9 lights. To save you the time of Googling C-9, these bulbs were about the size of a mango and threw off enough heat so that if you mistakenly decorated a dead tree with five strings of C-9s because you were a dumb kid and thought you were doing the folks a favor but the bulbs got so hot that they set the dead tree on fire. I don’t recommend using C-9s in a drought area. I’m just saying.

Animatronic characters have been a part of the lawn decorating scheme for several years. The most common ones are the waving Santa or the reindeer looking around. They are good old standbys in the decoration arena but for the most part, animated figures have been replaced by inflatables, and this is where I have to draw the line.

So far this year, I have seen inflatable Santa popping out of chimneys, flying helicopters, and riding motorcycles. I’ve seen giant inflatable snowmen, and Christmas trees, and sleighs with reindeer, and herds of elves. These inflatable figures are quite festive and may even bring a smile to your face when they are inflated, but most inflatable aficionados turn off the fans that power the figures during the day. This results in the figures collapsing into themselves so that Santa’s Workshop looks like it has been hit by a bomb, Frosty looks like global warming has done him in, and poor Santa winds up looking like he has suffered a heart attack and then been run over by a steamroller.

This is probably why I have never seen an inflatable nativity scene. It would be lovely at night but if you let the air out of baby Jesus during the day you are just asking for a lightning strike.

Now, go forth and decorate, remembering that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but if your Christmas decorations are lame, everybody will know.

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I am very concerned about our mother tongue. I fear that the tongue has developed a flesh eating disease and part of it is slowly falling off. I am concerned that we are losing pieces of our language on a regular basis and unless we do somethig to stem this tide, we are going to wind up saying goodbye to some our our favorite words. Just like the Pilgrims lost “thee”, “thou” and “pillory”, we are in danger of having some of our words hauled off to the literary dirt pile due to lack of use. Allow me to cite some examples.

PUTTERING – Puttering is a lost art and soon to become a lost word. When one putters, one keeps himself busy doing a string of minor tasks that aren’t very important. It is similar to actually being on the floor of Congress.

But even though puttering is a nice word and fun to say, we are losing it because nobody putters anymore. They “hang out”, “chill”, or “veg” but nobody putters. Pity.

The same can be said for TINKERING. Tinkering and puttering are essentially the same thing although tinkering employs the use of tools of some sort. A hammer, a screw driver and a roll of duct tape are the usual tinkering tools, but since nobody tinkers any more it makes no difference.

Now, let me ask you this? When was the last time you were TARDY? Depending on your age, the answer might be never, because you’ve never heard the word “tardy”. To be tardy means to be late. When I was in school, tardiness was a recorded statistic in your permanent record. Even your report card showed the number of days you missed school due to illness, and the number of times you were tardy due to you getting up too late. But alas, no one is tardy any more. They are “late”, “fashionably late”, or “tied up in traffic.”

DANDY  and PEACHY are also about to enter the lexicon of forgotten words. I love these words as descriptors of my mien. When somebody asks me how I am, or how my day is going, I respond with either DANDY, or PEACHY. I don’t want to be “just fine” or “good” as most people answer, I want a descriptive word to project my disposition.

The real upside to using woods like peachy and dandy is that when you use them in response to a question from a 20-year-old clerk at the hardware store you get the funniest expressions.

Finally, I want to restore the words FETCHING and COMELY to their rightful status in the English language. These words were once used to describe a very pretty girl but now these these lovely descriptions have been replaced with “hot”. How banal and unpoetic.

So I urge you, if you love the English language, go out into the world and do your best to keep our vocabulary from vanishing. Get a thesaurus and use it daily, or quotidian or diurnal; it’s up to you, but exercise your right to free speech and exercise our language by using more words.

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It was the final showdown between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. This one was moderated by Bob Schieffer who wrote all of the questions and divulged them to no one in advance. How cool would it be to have that job? Being able to ask the president and his challenger anything you wanted; boxers or briefs?, Mac or PC?, Who’d you rather do?

This time they sat in comfy chairs at a desk. Right off the bat I noticed that Mitt’s American flag lapel pin was bigger than the president’s American flag pin, apparently Mitt is buying into the rumor that “size matters”

President Obama drew first blood with the line, “The 1980’s called and they want their foreign policy back.” Mitt is starting to smile, channeling his inner Biden, then counter punches by saying, “Attacking me is not an agenda.”

Now the gloves are coming off, and Romney’s look very nice. I think they’re from Nordstroms.

Both candidates are getting snippy and bitchy, and interrupting each other and for a minute I thought I was watching the Jerry Springer Show, and now that I think about it, wouldn’t Jerry Springer have made great moderator for the debate?

They talked a lot about the troubles in Egypt. I think they could cure all of Egypt’s woes by installing giant water slides on the pyramids and opening up some Victoria’s Secret stores.

The topic went from foreign policy to small business to education to Medicare to tax cuts to the military so fast that I was getting dizzier than a St. Louis Cardinal’s fan watching game 7.

Barack went for the sarcasm, telling Romney “Now we have ships that go underwater; they’re called submarines.” Romney responded with, “Yeah, but how cool would it be if we had flying submarines?”

At this point, I left the debate for a while to catch up on the baseball game and the Bears-Lions game.

When I came back the candidates were spinning their questions like tops until they completely changed the topic. When they got to discussing Israel, they spun the questions like dreidels.

The sparring continued with punches landing on both sides but no knockout. Romney put his gloves back on.

Neither candidate addressed the number one threat to America. Canada. If they wanted to, Canada could just walk in and take over, bringing their Loonies with them to buy up the USA and rename it the USA,Eh.

The last question asked was about China and Obama said there’s a good China and a bad China. Romney said that the good China should be used when company comes over for dinner, and the bad China should be for every day use.

Mitt Romney said that he loves teachers, to which Bob Shieffer added, “I think we all love teachers.” Point Schieffer. The debates are over. Remember to vote.

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