Christmas Eve

To Dewey Walston -- scientist and trained, professional meteorologist for the National Weather Service -- Christmas is just another winter's day of sky watching.It might rain.Or shine.Or, to the delight of kids from 1 to 92 -- it might snow for Santa!At 4:45 p.m. yesterday, Walston put out this advisory for the Baltimore area from weather service headquarters in Sterling, Va.: "Dreams of a white Christmas could become reality."Though Walston was more accurately speaking of a white Christmas Eve, by 4: 46 p.m. he was getting "tons of calls" from all manner of media asking for the pertinent information: When?

Baltimore County homicide detectives continued yesterday to question acquaintances of a 21-year old man found dead Sunday morning outside the Hunt Valley fast-food restaurant he managed. Police are meeting with "friends, former friends, fellow co-workers and former workers" in a search for clues to the death of James W. Stambaugh Jr., said county police spokesman Bill Toohey. Stambaugh's badly beaten body was found outside a Burger King in the 11300 block of York Road about 6:30 a.m. Sunday.

A man and his dog died in a Southwest Baltimore house fire Monday night, city fire officials said yesterday. About 11 p.m. on Christmas Eve, firefighters responded to reports of smoke at an alley house in the 300 block of S. Norris St. in the Mount Clare neighborhood. While working to extinguish the heavy fire in the rear of the Formstone-clad rowhouse, firefighters were impeded by floor-to-ceiling piles of debris - mostly towers of empty paint cans and piles of aluminum cans - that littered the two-story dwelling, said Chief Kevin Cartwright, Fire Department spokesman.

McKinley Johnson Jr., a civilian Baltimore police employee, was assembling charity food baskets for the poor at a city tavern on Christmas Eve in 1974 when he noticed someone had stolen a can of lunch meat from one of the packages. The 40-year-old chased the thief outside and was shot after a brief confrontation, police say. The next day, hours before he died of his wounds, Johnson identified a man from a photo lineup - Michael Hughes, then a 27-year-old West Baltimore man with a record of shoplifting and drug arrests.

Arlo Guthrie and Willie Nelson played Tipitina's last week. The streetcars are running on Canal Street and the bars in the French Quarter have gotten the green light to remain open all night. Dave Dickerson would love to say that things are returning to normal in New Orleans, but he's still learning his way around town. Tulane's rookie coach will run his first practice on campus tomorrow. It's unusual to hold an 8 p.m. workout on Christmas Eve, but nothing has been status quo for the Green Wave and its city since Hurricane Katrina hit a week before Labor Day. "We have two freshmen players and they've never attended a class on campus," said Dickerson, who spent 12 seasons at Maryland as a player and assistant coach before taking on what already figured to be a daunting rebuilding job. "Those two kids and the four guys on the coaching staff have never practiced in Fogelman Arena or had a game there.

With Christmas falling on a Tuesday this year, more workers will cast aside their Monday blues as their employers - from manufacturers to the Maryland state government - offer Christmas Eve as a paid holiday. For some employers, making official holidays out of Christmas Eve and, to a lesser extent, New Year's Eve, is a morale booster and a reward for hard work in tough economic times. For others, such as factory operators, opening on a Monday and shutting down the next day doesn't make much business sense.

A choir will sing where school plays are staged and graduates receive their diplomas. Wreaths and banners proclaiming the Christmas message will adorn the walls and stage. The rows of seats in the Franklin High School auditorium will serve as pews. For 90 minutes this evening, the Reisterstown school's auditorium will be a house of worship, not just a public multipurpose room. Northwest Baptist Church, where lightning struck and caused a fire that destroyed the sanctuary in July, will hold its Christmas Eve service at the high school at 6 p.m. Rose Karolenko, a telecommunications engineer from Glyndon and a Northwest Baptist member, said making the school room feel like a church will be a challenge, but an exciting one. "In some ways it's good to get people out of their comfort zones and realize what's important," she said.

GLEN ROCK, Pa. -- In this tiny borough tucked away between folds of Pennsylvania farmland, residents have had plenty of reasons to break with their 150-year-old caroling tradition.Fierce snowstorms. Nights so cold that the slides on their trombones froze. Miserable rainstorms that soaked carolers to the bone. The Civil War. A flu epidemic that left all but nine carolers bedridden. The Depression. Two world wars.But when the clock strikes midnight this Christmas Eve, an exclusive, all-male group of 50 carolers led by a man with a 30-pound sack of peanuts slung over his shoulder will step once again into the cold December air to repeat a journey first made in 1848.

It's been 44 years, but George Stamas still remembers almost every detail about his first Christmas bicycle. "We all remember our first bike," he said yesterday, as he picked up his oldest son's Christmas present at Mount Washington Bike Shop. "What's more important at Christmas than a bike or a sled? A bike's a bike. A bike will always be a bike. Somehow, it ties the generations together." Stamas was age 5, living on the upper stretch of Keswick Road, when he got that first bike. And, although he saw a mysterious sheet-shrouded package spirited into the house on Christmas Eve, he still believed in Santa Claus.

On a snowy hillside, amid ornate monuments with names such as Garrett and Abell that are bound to the history of Baltimore, a small crowd gathered yesterday in front of a plain slab that bears perhaps the most famous name carved in stone in Green Mount Cemetery -- Johns Hopkins.The occasion was the 125th anniversary of the death of this wealthy trader and financier who achieved in death an admiration equal to the fortune he made in his life."We stand here today at the grave of a Quaker man of few words whose life remained simple and private, but who had the sharp wits to make a fortune and a large and remarkable vision of what was not only desirable but possible," said Steven Muller, a former president of the two institutions Hopkins founded -- the Johns Hopkins University and Johns Hopkins Hospital.