Christmas

SHE THINKS Santa Claus is the funniest thing she's ever seen."He makes me laugh, especially with those funny glasses."Peung is from Bangkok, Thailand, and she has just been in this country six months as a new bride. She did not know what Christmas was, and she did not expect the giant carnival atmosphere that precedes the event.We are sitting and looking in awe at the profusion of holiday decorations in a downtown mall. She is eating pizza.There are stars in her beautiful brown eyes this day. She is looking forward to the holiday with great anticipation.

"A lot of Christmas literature looks back in a romantic way," says William Woys Weaver, suggesting that our view of Christmas is one of bounty and largess, a holiday celebrated by those with substantial incomes."There's nothing wrong with that," he says, "but I thought that Christmas belonged to the poor, too."Mr. Weaver's new book, "The Christmas Cook: Three Centuries of American Yuletide Sweets" (HarperCollins, $18.95), has its share of sugarplums for the fat-wallet crowd. But of special inspiration is the chapter called "Humbug Pie."

For many of us -- by which I mean the mechanically challenged -- the scariest words in the English language are: "Some assembly required."As it happens, I am the 1993 poster person for the mechanically challenged.You can see my picture in hardware stores, with my trademark, gap-toothed grin, under which it says: "Doesn't know a claw hammer from M.C. Hammer."Normally, this is not a problem for me, since I simply stay away from tools in much the way diabetics avoid sugar and still manage to live a relatively full life.

The Christmas family knew it was onto "a good thing."It seemed everyone from great-aunt Helen Stevens to 9-month-old Grant Cassidy was at the races yesterday to see the Donelson Christmas family homebred gelding, Quicken, win the$40,000 Orme Wilson Jr. Memorial Stakes.Corrine Christmas Sullivan said in the paddock beforehand that she was nervous."I don't know what's worse, having a horse that can't run or having a horse that you think has some ability and then hoping he lives up to expectations," she said.

Amy Grant loves Christmas music. She loves it enough to have released an album of Christmas music back in 1992, and to have done Christmas shows in Nashville every year since.The shows have done well, too. Not that Grant is in it for the money -- truth is, she donates her profits each year to charity -- but she does get a lot of satisfaction from knowing that the Christmas show she puts on with the Nashville Symphony can sell out the Nashville Arena for two nights each season.Still, her ambitions are bigger than that.

The 40 county workers gathered in the lobby of the Arundel Center, bundled up and wearing their walking shoes.The jokes started flying even before the Christmas procession, led by the power-walking county executive, could even get out the door."

YESTERDAY I was about to declare a total victory in my battle with the Christmas tree when I saw the dark green extension cord was missing. This cord, which was supposed to connect the tree lights to the wall outlet, was also supposed to blend in with the greenery, making it appear as if the tree were illuminated by magic, not dad.It was the seamless electricity look I was after, and I was angry that it had eluded me. Instead of a pleasing Christmas-green, the...

There's nothing unusual about hearing the strains of "O Little Town of Bethlehem" being sung before a group of veterans on the Sunday before Christmas.But when the carolers are the Yiddisha Mommas and their husbands, members of the Star of David Post No. 292 of the Jewish War Veterans of the USA, the sight might cause some pause.That was not the case, though, among the 15 veterans -- colonels, sergeants and rank and file from the nation's conflicts since World War II -- all patients at the Perry Point VA Medical Center.

BOSTON -- And so on Thursday morning, she awoke to the realization that the election was over. The little white things falling outside her window were not chads but snowflakes. The date was not Nov. 8 but Dec. 14. Automatically turning on the TV, it gradually dawned on her that Tim Russert, Greta Van Susteren and David Boies were not really members of her family, though they'd been her significant others lo these many weeks. It was clear that the analyst on the screen talking about 2004 was a political junkie who must be taken to rehab immediately!

THIS TIME of year, I dream of Christmases past.Lying awake at night, thinking of the tasks yet to be done before the big day, I clear my head of stress by mentally traveling back to the home I grew up in on a street that no longer exists, except in my mind's eye. During these waking dreams, I explore minute-by-minute the magical texture of the days I once knew as a child, when anticipation of Christmas was orchestrated by home and community traditions more...