You are browsing the archives of 2008 November.

In a season that inspires earnest letters about toys, one notable batch is being sent not by kids to Santa’s workshop but by parents to the executive suites of real-world toy makers.
The message: Please, in these days of economic angst, cut back on marketing your products directly to our children.
The letter-writing initiative was launched by [...]

Fans of the holiday classic “A Christmas Story” are celebrating the film’s 25th anniversary with a convention and trips to the house where the movie was made.
The 1983 film, an adaptation of Jean Shepard’s memoir of a boy in the 1940s, was set in Indiana but largely filmed in Ohio. The movie starred Peter Billingsley [...]

GERMANY is facing a Santa Claus shortage in the run-up to Christmas, as new recruits fail to meet high Teutonic standards of jollity and expertise.
Job agencies, which are currently conducting a desperate last-minute recruitment drive, have reported a distinct lack of jolly, rotund, fluffy-bearded Santas with no criminal records.
Among the tough criteria are [...]

Jdimytai Damour was a big man — 270 pounds, by one account — but a gentle giant to his friends, who said he loved to chat about movies, Japanese anime and politics. So on Saturday, they were still reeling from the violent and seemingly inexplicable way Damour had died — trampled before sunrise Friday, the [...]

A worker died after being trampled by a throng of unruly shoppers when a suburban Wal-Mart opened for the holiday sales rush Friday, authorities said.
At least three other people were injured.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc., in Bentonville, Ark., would not confirm the reports of a stampede but said a “medical emergency” had caused the company to close [...]

Whoops! A picture of a Christmas tree is not the first thing you would expect to see on an invitation to an event celebrating Hanukkah, but that is exactly what recipients of invitations to this year’s White House Hanukkah reception initially got in the mail.
The invitation sent to American Jewish leaders on behalf of the [...]

Three years have passed since the Santa’s Village theme park in East Dundee closed its doors. A few attempts have been made on reopening the park at its old location, but without success. Well, now Santa is looking at a potential new location.
Santa Claus and officials from Grizzly Jack’s Grand Bear Lodge and Resort in [...]

For nearly 30 years the price of real Christmas trees has remained virtually unchanged. According to Joe Sharp, President of Yule Tree Farms in Canby Oregon (the fifth largest Christmas tree farm in the country) the median price for a Douglas Fir in 1980 was $25 and a Noble Fir was $45. Today Douglas Firs [...]