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As an introvert, while I think the idea of carolers going door to door and singing is charming, I wouldn't really be happy to have them come to my door. My ideal interaction with carolers would involve just listening to them sing, saying thank you and merry Christmas, and then letting them go on to the next place, but these kinds of things always have to be more complicated than that. I would probably have to talk to them for far longer than seems necessary, and maybe give them something, and I'd probably end up donating money to somewhere because they made me feel guilty. I don't imagine it would be like in that song where they demand a figgy pudding and won't leave until they get some (at least I don't think that happens anymore), but you never know.

Sending them away and telling them you have their recording from last year does seem rude, but it would be effective.

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When I was growing up, we always had a real Christmas tree, so I never had to deal with putting a tree together. Getting the tree and putting it up was always an adventure though. We went out to a Christmas tree farm, looked for the right one, got it cut down, brought it home, shoved it through the door, put it on the Christmas tree stand and secured it, which always took longer than it seemed like it should. Thinking back on it, having to assemble a Christmas tree might actually have been simpler. It wouldn't look as good, though.

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Ever since it was first published, Robert Ripley's Believe It Or Not! has had an enormous amount of imitators and rip-offs. Some of them were commissioned by large syndicates (and some small syndicates, like the one Jack Kirby worked for), and others were created by staff cartoonists for their local newspapers. One such strip with a local flavor was Our Own Oddities, created by Ralph Graczak, which appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch starting in 1940 and ended in 1991. The oddities covered were most often related to St. Louis, but quite a few were from elsewhere in Missouri or other midwestern states. All of them were submitted by local readers. There was quite a bit of space given to local produce that looked like various people and animals, or was just abnormally large. Readers generally mailed this produce directly to the newspaper offices, I imagine so that they could verify the truthfulness of the claim (though stretching the truth never seemed to bother R…

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Jiggs has found a clever way of disguising things he doesn't want his wife to know he's sneaking into the house. What he must realize, though, is that he better make sure to get her a good Christmas present, otherwise his ruse will be quickly discovered.

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Some ways of hiding presents work better than others. I was never able to find where my parents hid our Christmas presents when I was a kid. I think my dad probably hid them in plain sight, in a storage room among other boxes with boring stuff in them, so we never thought to look there. If you wait until the last minute to buy your presents, then you can avoid the whole issue. Of course, you can also do that if you wrap them immediately after buying them, but I'm too much of a procrastinator to do that.