Santa Claus

Bad ideas seem to skip generations when it comes to making holiday movies. Today's hectic farce-spectacle Fred Claus replicates the key mistake of the 1985 dud, Santa Claus: The Movie. With the potential of Santa's wonderworks at their disposal, all the filmmakers come up with for a plot is the peril of measuring toyshop productivity. In Fred Claus, the villain is Kevin Spacey's efficiency expert, who threatens to shut Santa's operation down if he can't meet children's increasing demands.

Next Friday BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU'RE DEAD -- (THINKFilm) Brothers (Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke) decide to rob their parents' jewelry store. CHRISTMAS IN WONDERLAND -- (Yari Fim Group) Two kids from Los Angeles move to Canada, help solve a crime and discover something interesting about Santa Claus. With Patrick Swayze, Tim Curry and Carmen Electra. FRED CLAUS -- (Warner Bros.) Fred Claus (Vince Vaughn), Santa's bitter older brother, is forced to move to the North Pole.

HE'S A SCARY GUY, A GIANT OF A MAN who wears garish clothes, has too much facial hair and booms out "Ho, ho, ho" in a way that suggests "I eat little boys and girls." At least that must be what Santa Claus seems like to kids who are put on the lap of an enormous stranger and expected to smile for the camera. Just take a look at the pictures on this page if you don't believe us. "What scared little Kimberly Rineer so badly?" we asked her mother, Sharon Mettam-Adams of Cockeysville.

Out-of-work actor Kevin Lowry thinks he has not only stumbled upon a holiday gold mine, but perhaps his perfect role: Santa Claus. No matter that the 27-year-old Chicagoan has nary a white hair upon his head, or that he tips the scales at a quite unjolly 145 pounds. The only appearances Lowry's Santa is making are on the Internet and telephone, calling children whose parents have discovered his Web site, www.SantaCallsMe.com. Lowry is an e-Santa, a growing Internet presence that, for a fee, calls or e-mails children and adults during the holidays and takes on the Father Christmas persona.

In desperate need of cash: Santa Claus. Christmas might be over, but Santa Claus - that is, Santa Claus Anonymous - is $100,000 in the red. Facing a deadline on Wednesday, the longtime Baltimore-based nonprofit organization is scrambling to get about $100,000 to fully reimburse its 17 participating merchants. Donations through the mail totaled less than budgeted, said Jane Allan Bowie, the group's marketing director. "The bulk of our money comes from the mail appeal," said Bowie. "Last year we got $313,000 from mail solicitations.

THE LITTLE girl's name is Patience Cole, and the big guy's name is C. Kelton Alley, but we will keep his identity between us adults. This time of year, Alley passes as Mr. Santa Claus. As Patience is 3 years old, we are reasonably sure we do not reveal any secrets to her through the pages of the newspaper. We will leave it to Santa to deliver the true secrets of the season. This Santa arrives at the Arundel Mills mall from Rockwood, Tenn., via the North Pole. Patience arrives here with her Aunt Danielle Osterling and her innocence.

It's not easy being red. For decades, Santa Claus has anchored the Thanksgiving parade. A tough job, says the parade's longtime Santa, but somebody's got to do it for Baltimore's children. There's the sweltering wool costume. The grueling hours of ho-ho-ho-ing. The pointed questions from increasingly suspicious kids. And these days, there is also stiff competition. SpongeBob SquarePants, the ubiquitous cartoon character "who lives in a pineapple under the sea," served as the grand marshal in yesterday's 53rd annual parade on Pratt Street.

A raft of positive economic news sent stocks up across the board yesterday, and the Dow Jones industrial average shot to its highest close in 19 months as investors gained confidence that the economic recovery is firmly under way and the conflict in Iraq is going better. The Dow, an index of 30 blue-chip stocks, jumped 102.82 points, or 1 percent, to close at 10,248.08. The index is up 22.85 percent for the year, and has risen 465 points since the month began. It was the second 100-plus point gain of the week.

Vladimir Marinich's hand-painted holiday figurines come in a wide variety of styles - including Santa Claus golfing, fishing, wearing graduation robes and playing baseball for the Orioles. But they all serve one purpose: raising funds for a Howard Community College scholarship in honor of his late companion, nursing teacher Marion Durkan. The Howard Community College history professor started something of a holiday tradition at the school six years ago when he started offering his Santas, snowmen and other holiday figurines to support the Marion Durkan Memorial Endowment.

Forget stockings. At the 10th annual Santa Claus Anonymous wine tasting, each guest was given a wineglass with a candy cane jauntily tilted inside it. As folks filed into the George Peabody Library, the candy came out of the glass and samples of different wines went in. "If you only try one wine, you've gotta sample the pinot noir," guest Jeff Seabolt was overheard suggesting to friend and fellow vino-phile Chris Brown. Among the 310 guests sipping wine, sampling microbrew beers, and clustering around the crab dip: Allan Gushue, event chair; Jim Breiner and Lori Pinson, event honorary chair; James "Bud" Russell, Santa Claus Anonymous board president; Robert Booker, board chair; David Blumberg, Wayne Walters, Vince and Laurie Columbia, Pete Kohanski, John Snead and Reed Booker, board members; Barbara Brown, Santa Claus Anonymous executive director; Doug Schmidt, CB Richard Ellis commercial real estate broker; David Strouse, Continental Realty vice president; Virginia Kline, community volunteer; Ruth Lenrow, Citigroup vice president; Nancy Ferrone, Dietary Consulting Inc. president; Carol Hirschburg, Howard Consulting Group vice president; Ellie Wang, Baltimore-based actor; Erik Barrueto, Morgan Stanley financial adviser; Jack Rodgers, Camden Benefits Group president; Jay Angelo, TAI Consulting principal; and Debbie Hiltz, Community PhoneBook senior account executive.