Eideard

We’ve all said something this dumb one time or another:

I don’t think our extended family has a single Chevy pickup anymore. Most of the pickups are Dodges, preferably diesel. But, the commercial makes me chuckle everytime I see it.

Don’t blame Father Christmas if he doesn’t allow your child to sit on his knee at a school event — teachers may have banned him from coming into contact with youngsters.

While those playing Father Christmas are no longer required to pass a Criminal Records Bureau check, many schools have decided to “err on the side of caution” and impose rules on grotto behaviour. Parents who have offered to don the red suit have been told they must not allow youngsters to sit on their laps and cannot be left alone with them.

Because CRB checks are required only for volunteers who have regular contact with children, Father Christmases are exempt. However, government guidance states: “Under no circumstances must a volunteer who has not obtained a CRB disclosure … be left unsupervised with children.”

Russell Hobby, the general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said this meant many of its members had decided it was better if Father Christmases avoided all physical contact with children…

A spokesman for the Department for Education said children could still sit on Father Christmas’s knee as long as parents were consulted and were “completely comfortable” with the situation. “Santas in schools should be treated in the same way that other visitors to the school are managed. Our guidance recommends that for such visitors a member of staff is present,” added the spokesman.

Idiots. It’s more than conceivable, you know, that a modicum of care and oversight can be maintained without turning holiday festivities into rituals requiring approval by censors and bluenoses.

Faced with the difficult task of balancing a budget in austere times, officials in New York’s Suffolk County said on Friday they had no choice: they had to sack Santa Claus. The county executive said he could not justify carving out $660 from his $2.7 billion budget to pay David McKell, 83, a World War II veteran and former homicide detective, to don his Santa suit for the tenth year running and greet children on Long Island…

He said that some 750 county employees were facing layoffs as a result of budget restraints, including what he described as a $20 million cut in state aid to the county’s health system…

Steve Levy was quickly called a Grinch by his opponents.

“Do we really have to hold Santa Claus hostage to balance the budget?” said Bill Lindsay, a Democrat and the presiding officer of the county legislature.

“I mean, $600? Give me a break,” Joseph Sawicki, a Republican who as county comptroller is charged with overseeing the county government’s fiscal prudence, said in an interview. “There comes a point where you go overboard in terms of penny-pinching…”

In the end, Steve Bellone, the current town supervisor of nearby Babylon, who is running as the Democratic candidate to succeed Levy, said he would pay for Santa.

Levy, who is not running for reelection, dismissed Bellone’s gesture as “pure grandstanding”, and said his office was investigating whether the check breached rules governing gifts to county agencies.

Exactly the kind of response I’d expect from a Scrooge getting caught out at being a cheapskate at managing somebody else’s money. He hates like hell to admit he’s a lousy money manager; so, he blames the people who point out his distorted values.

Eight-year-old Juliana-Rose Hatcher had tracked Santa Claus all of Friday with the aid of NORAD’s Santa hotline, before she got some unexpected help from Michelle Obama.

The first lady stayed behind when her husband, President Barack Obama, and daughters Sasha and Malia hit the beach on their Christmas vacation in Hawaii to answer calls from children trying to pinpoint Santa’s whereabouts.

“She asked me what I wanted from Santa and I told her an MP3 player and she said her daughter wants an MP3 player too,” Juliana, of Goose Creek, South Carolina, told Reuters.

Her mother Jennifer said at first they thought it was a joke or a prerecorded message but quickly realized “wow, it really, really is her.”

The White House said the first lady spent about 40 minutes talking with children who called the line…

Austin Futch, 10, from Memphis, Tennessee, said he quizzed the first lady about a few things on his mind concerning life in the White House.

He wanted to know how it felt to be surrounded at all times by Secret Service agents — not too bad because they are nice guys — and if it was hard being married to the president.

“No, he’s a pretty good guy,” Michelle Obama told him, according to a transcript of the calls released by the White House.

“I mean, it’s a tough job and sometimes you want to do everything you can to help him, but it’s pretty easy being married to him. He’s kind of funny — fun to hang out with.”

Bravo, Michelle. Taking the time to take an extra step in the direction of children is something too many people forget about.

Proper political responsibilities include every part of the population. Even those not yet old enough to vote.

Santa Claus has been canned from Macy’s, and he’s anything but jolly about it. His fans aren’t happy, either. And there are many.

John Toomey, known for 20 years at the Union Square Macy’s in San Francisco as “Santa John,” was told Saturday he’ll have to take his “ho, ho, hos” elsewhere because an adult couple complained about a joke he cracked.

The joke has been in his Santa bag for decades. But after thousands of tellings, the 68-year-old retired caretaker for the elderly finally hit the wrong recipients – apparently an older woman and her husband, who considered it inappropriate…

The kids who sit on his lap, he said, get only his trademark laugh and questions about what toys they want…

But several workers used words including “devastated” and “overreaction” to describe their take on Santa John being booted from his throne at Santaland on the seventh floor. They all asked not be named because store policy forbids them from speaking publicly about such matters, but their un-yule-ish gloom was palpable…

There’s no doubt Toomey takes seriously the responsibility that comes with the red hat.

“With the children, it’s important to listen carefully to them and make sure they’re doing things properly, like brushing their teeth, helping Mom around the house, things like that,” Toomey said. “Then when they tell you what they want, repeat it loudly enough so the parents can hear, and tell the child you’ll talk it over with Mrs. Santa and the elves. That way you leave it up to the parents…

“I’ve got my Social Security and some savings, so I’ll be OK,” he said. “But I sure do miss being Santa.”

You expect to run into a certain percentage of stiffs in this land. Rightwingers hate to admit it’s their kith and kin who work hardest at cluttering up our liberties with nanny-state ideology. But, here we go again – trying to get a job back for a Santa with a sense of humor. RTFA for his mild humor.

Next week, someone will probably accuse him of being the AntiChrist – even though holiday theft worked the other way round.

The bakelite version was my favorite

A Turkish archaeologist has called on his government to demand that Italy return the bones of St Nicholas to their original resting place.

The 3rd Century saint – on whom Santa Claus was modelled – was buried in the modern-day town of Demre in Turkey. But in the Middle Ages his bones were taken by Italian sailors and re-interred in the port of Bari…

While Christmas is by and large not celebrated in Muslim Turkey, the Christmas figure of Santa Claus certainly is in the Mediterranean town of his birth.

He was born in what was then the Greek city of Myra in the third century, and went on to become the local bishop, with a reputation for performing miracles and secretly giving gold to the needy – on one occasion being forced to climb down a chimney to leave his donation.

After his death he was canonised as Saint Nicholas, and venerated in much of the Christian world. But when Myra was occupied by Arab forces in the 11th Century, Italian sailors came and took the saint’s bones to the port of Bari, where they remain interred to this day.

I know, I know – everyone should have the right to get their favorite superstitious bones back.

“No god? … No problem!” reads the advertisement featuring the smiling faces of people wearing Santa Claus hats. “Be good for goodness’ sake.”

Over the next two weeks, 270 of the ads will go up on city buses and trains in the Washington area as part of the holiday kickoff to campaigns sponsored by secular groups in cities around the country and abroad. If last year was any indication, the signs are likely to spark a theological war of words.

“We don’t intend to rain on anyone’s parade, but secular people celebrate the holidays, too, and we’re just trying to reach out to our people,” said Roy Speckhardt, the executive director of the American Humanist Association. “To the degree that we are reaching out to the godly, it’s just to say that you can be good without god…”

Elsewhere, this year’s secular signs vary in tone.

In Seattle, this year’s signs say “Millions are good without God.” In Las Vegas, signs to be put up this week will say “Reasons Greetings” and “Yes, Virginia … there is no God…”

The campaigns come against a backdrop of a growing number of nonbelievers. Fifteen percent of Americans identified themselves as having “no religion” in a 2008, up from 8 percent in 1990, according to a study by the Program on Public Values at Trinity College in Hartford.

Overdue. But, don’t get your shorts in a bunch over discovering Americans are more ignorant than the rest of the industrial West. That’s true in almost every aspect of life – whether it be politics, social structure, interpersonal relationships, knowledge of science.

You name it – we can figger out how to lag behind.

Thanks to Hop for this one.

Barry Goldberg said a nice gesture went unappreciated at the Wal-Mart Supercenter at Lisbon Landing over the weekend.

He said he purchased $1,300 worth of $10 gift cards to Wal-Mart with the intention of dressing as Santa Claus and giving them out in front of the store. He said it wasn’t a gimmick it or stunt. He said he was just moved to do something nice to make the holiday brighter.

But his gesture of kindness as the Secret Santa didn’t last long…

“They asked me, ‘Well, where did you get these cards?’” he said. “’I bought them from your store 20 minutes ago.’ ‘Well, what are you doing?’ (they asked). I said, “I’m giving out gift cards. It’s the holidays. The right thing to do is to give, isn’t it?’”

In a statement to Eyewitness News, Wal-Mart states,” While we appreciate the customer’s patronage, we understand that he was interrupting the flow of foot traffic in the store’s vestibule.”

After the story made the news, the manager of the Target store in town – one with brains as opposed to the dweeb managing the Wal-Mart store – called Goldberg and told him he could bring the cards to a Target store and swap them out and pass them out there.