By Staff
Let's say for some nutty reason you wanted to buy everything mentioned in that too-long song, “12 Days of Christmas.”
All those partridges in pear trees, milkin' maids and golden rings would set you back $18,348.87, up from $17,296.91 last year, according to a financial company, PNC Advisors, which has been tracking this stuff for 21 years.
Think of the grillz you could get for that kind of bling.
If you wanted to scrimp on those lords a leapin', you might be able to pick up the Village People on the rebound from Nebraska for a song…
Catholic Charities in Omaha canceled a Village People concert over concerns about homoerotic lyrics, but the show must go on in March, so instead, the Family Stone Experience will play.
It includes members of the 1970s psychedelic funk band Sly and the Family Stone. They're just “Everyday People.”
The Catholic group says despite that band's reported drug use, it's a better fit with the event's themes.
Santa collapses: John Rappach, 60, clutched his chest and fell near the end of a Christmas assembly in front of 750 schoolchildren at Roosevelt Elementary at Hubbard, Ohio, Dec. 21.
School officials rushed in crisis counselors to reassure students that Santa would be fine by Christmas Eve.
Charlie Brown, forester: Rhode Island's official Christmas tree, an 18-foot blue spruce, shed its needles and died after state House workers dried it with commercial fans and sprayed it with a fire-retardant chemical.
It had to be whisked from the building Dec. 21.
Gov. Donald Carcieri sheepishly explained the tree's demise at the hands of complying with the new fire code and suggested an artificial replacement might be in order next year.
Forty inebriated people in Santa suits went wild in Auckland, New Zealand, robbing a convenience store, assaulting security guards and relieving themselves in public.
An Oklahoma City store owner, Mike Denison, thought it “was kind of funny” to share his holiday spirit by creating a decorative crime scene with reindeer, a sleigh and a Santa dummy face down on the lawn with an arrow shot by the Grinch in his back.
59: Number of movies with “Santa Claus” in the title.
I have never seen Billy Bob Thornton's “Bad Santa.”
For that matter, I have never seen Ralphie in “A Christmas Story,” even though TBS shows it 12 times around the clock.
Michigan's Tim Allen stars in a third “Santa Clause” movie due next year.
Mary and Joseph: That's what they're calling newborn twins abandoned in the vestibule of North Austin Lutheran Church in Chicago.
Santa Claus, Ind. - We get there to Holiday World pretty regularly, but I've never been to the other two towns where they think about Christmas all year, Santa Claus, Ariz., and Santa Claus, Ga.
According to a survey of 130 mall Santas, on average he's 52 years old and packing 218 pounds on a 5-foot-9 frame.
Santa's favorite cookie is chocolate chip.
Even Santa doesn't like fruitcake.
How ironic: In the same year everybody was arguing about the so-called “war on Christmas,” the holiday fell on a Sunday and some “megachurches” canceled services.
I read about one that even sent “worship DVDs” home with families.
Wal-Mart employees awarded…a lot: A California jury Dec. 22 awarded $172 million (USA Today) or $207 million (Detroit Free Press) to 116,000 current and former Wal-Mart employees who claimed they were illegally denied lunch breaks.
The class-action suit is the first to go to trial of about 40 nationwide alleging workplace violations by the world's largest retailer.
Wal-Mart settled a similar suit in Colorado for $50 million.
Presidential coins: New dollar coins featuring each dead president will be released by the U.S. Mint in 2007 under a bill President Bush signed into law.
The coins, and an accompanying $10 gold piece for collectors that features former first ladies, are intended to be a big money raiser like the state quarters program. Four coins will be issued a year in the chief executives' order of service.