Strollerderby : santa claus

Lego Santa Crab Will Frighten Children Into Being Good All Year

Brett Singer — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 23:30:00 GMT

Radio host Max Kellerman once joked that Santa was just a story goyim children were told so that they would behave themselves. (Or something like that.) So from Gizmodo (originally from someplace else, see below for the link trail) we give you – THE EVIL LEGO SANTA CRAB!

Hide the children! Unless they've been bad this year, in which case you could use THE EVIL LEGO SANTA CRAB as a deterrent to next year's bad behavior. Because wouldn't you behave if you thought this thing was coming after you?

It kind of reminds me of the Simpsons episode where Homer makes a clown bed for Bart, but the clown is a hideous and frightening image that gives Bart nightmares. (According to Wikipedia, the "Can't sleep, clown will eat me" thing was based on an actual incident from Simpsons writer Mike Reiss' childhood.) In other words, don't show this page to your kids. Unless you want to frighten them into behaving. If that's your goal, give it a shot – I mean, look at that thing. I'm a little scared.

Source: Gizmodo via Andrew Colunga via Neatorama

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No Christmas Specials for Some Jewish Kids

Brett Singer — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 17:30:00 GMT

Dahlia Lithwick has a piece over at Slate that discusses which Christmas specials are OK for Jewish kids to watch. Not according to the Torah, which was written pre-TV, but based on her discussions with a few families.

She found that her generation's Jewish kids were allowed to watch "one or all" of the following: How the Grinch Stole Christmas, A Charlie Brown Christmas, and The Year Without Santa Claus. Two of these are among my personal favorites, but I would include Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer in that list. Apparently that one didn't make the cut for the Jewish now-grown-up kids that Lithwick spoke to.

The reason surprised me – a "no Santa" rule. No Jesus, I get. Jesus is religion. Nothing wrong with religion, but if it isn't YOUR religion and you choose not to watch shows that feature religious elements, that's your choice. But Santa? Was he in the Bible? Frosty was also banned from some Jewish households, according to Lithwick, because of a "no resurrections rule", which I think is pushing it.

Here's the thing – I like Christmas specials. I even like Christmas music. And I'm Jewish. Obviously Christmas is a religious holiday for millions of people. But last time I checked, Rudolph wasn't one of the apostles. So I hereby give permission to all Jewish parents — let the kids watch Rudolph! Why deprive them of the joys of Rankin and Bass? The Island of Misfit Toys? Yukon Cornelius? Hermey the Elf who would rather be a dentist? This a great show! And The Year Without a Santa Claus? Heat and Cold Miser! This is good stuff, people!

Interestingly, A Charlie Brown Christmas does feature religion prominently. Somehow that made the cut in many Jewish households, according to Lithwick. Why? In my opinion, there are a few reasons. First, Linus says it. That makes it automatically more OK than if the same words come out of some claymation dog (Davey and Goliath, anyone?). Second, it's done in the context of "good will towards men", which is hard to argue with. Third, it isn't presented in a way that says, "If you don't believe these words, you will burn in Hell for all eternity." It's actually quite lump-in-the-throat inducing, in a good way. Last, after Linus says his piece, everyone finally starts being nice to Charlie Brown, decorating his tree, and making nice warm and fuzzy holiday feelings. That's my theory, anyway.

Anyway, whatever your faith may be, or even if you happen to faithless, don't ban Christmas specials just because they happen to be about Christmas. Give 'em a chance. Maybe the kids will like it. You might enjoy it as well.

Oh, Merry Christmas. And Happy Chanukah.

Source: Slate

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Gramps Goes Christmas Crazy with 20,000 Santas

JeanneSager — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 17:58:00 GMT

Jean-Guy Laquerre really likes Christmas. No, we mean he REALLY likes Christmas.The grandfather from Boucherville, Canada has cornered the market on Santa spirit with more than twenty thousand of them.

The retired teacher has been named as the biggest collector of Santa Claus memorabilia on the entire planet, earning his place in the Guinness World Records for 2009.

It all started with a papier mache Santa, to this day his favorite in the collection. But Grandpa Jean-Guy has moved on to inflatable Santas for the outside, Kriss Kringle shower curtains and Father Christmas pie plates (check out the photo gallery of some of his favorites at the Mirror). There are stuffed Santas and Santa statues, Santas for the tree and Santas set up in front of the TV.

And somehow, his grandkids aren't embarrased by all this Father Christmas fervor. Perhaps the craziest (and sweetest) piece of this Christmas story is the response of Jean-Guy's sixteen-year-old grandson and nine-year-old granddaughter. They invite their friends over to check out Grandpa's collection!

Image: The Mirror

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Babble Talk: Staying Home and Skipping the Santa Myth

Miriam Axel-Lute — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 21:10:00 GMT

All around me it seems, my peers and my fellow Babble writers are exploring putting their collective feet down about holiday traditions. Perhaps it's that we feel emboldened to declare our own rules once our kids start getting older, or maybe it's just time for a little generational power shift. Who knows.

One of the major issues is who goes where when. Jeanne Sager, in her bad parent column "Sorry Can't Make It" has a firm answer: We're staying put. I seem to be luckier than Jeanne in that I generally enjoy the family holiday gatherings I'm expected to attend, but I know plenty of people in her boat, and I recognize all of her other points: The non-festiveness of travel, of being in company mode, of being expected to dress up the kid. I would add to that the sheer exhaustion of decisions and logistics, since in my extended family we've never settled on a default plan—I think we've spent Christmas day in five different places over the past eight years.

So we, too, have decided to make it our new default to stay in our very own house for most of Christmas day itself, with a drive to nearby grandparents for dinner. It feels like declaring a center, and lets us create a Christmas tradition that is our family's own, instead of trying to awkwardly re-create the childhood Christmases of one of our families of origin.

We're still getting in the car on the 26th for a long drive, it's true, but somehow that feels different.

Meanwhile, Sasha Brown-Worsham won't let her child believe in Santa, and commenters seem to think she's taking an extreme and Grinchy stance. I never would have expected it, having been a believe-until-late kid myself, but as a parent, I'm with Sasha. For me it doesn't have to do with trauma from mall santas, or even wanting to avoid waiting in line to see one. Nor does it have to do with being a humbug or a Grinch—if anything we go a bit overboard with emphasizing the magic and stories of the season. If my daughter decides for herself to believe in Santa, as some kids who are explicitly told otherwise do, that won't bother me.

Nor I don't mind telling the story. I've read Rudolph in the original rhyming couplets a dozen times in the past week. In fact, the way we've decided to handle Santa's omnipresence is just to add a bunch of other stories about gift-giving figures (La Befana, Holle, St. Nicholas) to my daughter's repetoire of seasonal tales.

The thing that gets me is how people suddenly get seriously invested in our children really believing something that isn't true, as if that's required in order to have a sense of wonder about the season. Not just telling a fun story, but going to major contortions to make it seem plausible (different handwriting on the tags etc.) and having hysterics if another kid lets the truth slip (or a parent opts out of the game). I am also pretty creeped out by the idea that some random old guy is keeping track of your behavior and is going to judge you worthy of gifts or not a year later. How very Calvinist. Besides, no parent I've heard of actually withholds gifts for bad behavior any more.

There's also the story I remember hearing of the girl who kept asking Santa for things she knew her parents couldn't afford, and kept getting them. When she learned, she was consumed with guilt. Yippee! There's the Christmas spirit for you!

So, while I won't be on a crusade to spoil other families' Santa charades, we're not playing, thanks.

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Secret Santa Security Snafu

Shannon LC Cate — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 15:02:00 GMT

Some post offices around the country allow volunteers to pick up children's letters to Santa, read them and send something from the list to the child. This program was temporarily halted this week in New York when a letter carrier recognized one of the "Secret Santas" as a registered sex offender.

Rather than scrap the program, New York will resume it tomorrow, but will black out identifying information from children and assign each one a number so that the Santas can drop the gifts at the post office to be sent to the children from there.

I know it's important to be careful with children's security, and having never heard of this kind of program before, I was a little surprised that strangers were being given letters with children's names and addresses and specific gift requests. But I'm glad the post office found a way to maintain the spirit of the program without giving in to undue hysteria. And just for the record, no known harm was done to any child in this incident. It was simply decided that precaution would be best.

Letter to Santa: FailureMagazine.com

Put Your Child on Santa's "Nice" List

Shannon LC Cate — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 04:03:00 GMT

Disney Family is offering a fun, free treat for the holidays. At their site you can upload a photo of your child and have her added to Santa's "nice" list, and your child will receive a custom video from Santa. It's cute, free, easy and fun. But you have to register for the site and my informant says the picture needs to be under approximately 1MB.

Enjoy!

Scared of Santa? You Are Not Alone

Kate Tuttle — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 20:32:00 GMT

It's a tale as old as time, as common as the birthday girl dissolving in tears or the little slugger who freaks out when it's his turn at the plate. Kids just don't do planned photo ops very well; in fact, when it comes to organized fun, kids are usually the flies in the ointment, the ants at the picnic. And when it comes to Santa...well, let's just say that the idea is a lot more appealing to them than the reality.

If you thought your kids (or, at an earlier age, you yourself) were the only ones to encounter the department-store or mall santa and feel an immediate, sudden onset of terror, a new book might reassure you. Scared of Santa, by Denise Joyce and Nancy Watkins, compiles scores of photos from a century's worth of scary encounters between such kids and the often rather creepy Mr. Claus.

I particularly like the family pictured here, because the photo seems to suggest that being terrified by Santa is a malady of the very young. Little miss firstborn seems quite pleased with herself, perhaps thinking of the hula hoop or Barbie awaiting her Christmas morning. The middle child and only boy looks scared but self-aware, almost spoofing his own fears, while the baby of the family is launching into a no-holds-barred meltdown. Good time for all, I'm sure!

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It's Mr. Santa, and He's Nasty

JeanneSager — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 17:34:00 GMT

The Santa Claus at a mall in Edmonton, Canada has a serious case of the nasties. The guy hired to ho, ho, ho all day has started yelling at the parents who snap their own pictures of their kids on his lap instead of paying a $14 fee for a "basic picture package."

Santa says the parents who take their own pictures are basically shoplifting. Apparently he hasn't heard Santa's supposed to be the giving type.

"What message are you sending your children; 'Look Tommy and Sally, see what your parents stole you for Christmas'," Lyle Young told the Edmonton Sun.

Before you start thinking parents are somehow gypping the miserly Mr. Kringle, Young is paid a flat fee by the photography company that runs the mall Santa station. He gets paid whether parents pony up or not. And the mall's manager has said he'd be willing to pay a Santa to sit there and let parents take all the free pictures they want.

As a photographer, personally, I'm not big on the pictures you get when you sit down with Santa or any major character. The kids are stressed, the photographers are rarely trained, the lighting is terrible, and the photos look like you-know-what. Even the trained photographers don't have the same eye for my child that I do. I'm big on candid photos, where they spend the entire time coaxing the kids to "look at the camera" and "say cheese." You know what happens when my daughter says cheese? She closes her eyes and puts on the world's goofiest grin - it's the ham look developed after years of being tortured by her mother the photographer.

But even parents who don't care a fig about the artistry want that picture for something special. Usually, the store pictures are marked with a brand, so short of taking them home, scanning them in and working with special software to erase that mark, you can't reproduce the picture to send out to family or friends anyway. So taking one of your own is often the only way to get a picture that you can share, or a picture you can make in the right size for the frame you have in mind.

Then there's that money. Fourteen dollars may not sound like much to Lyle Young, but to a family that's out shopping with just a few dollars in their pockets, it can be a big dent in the budget. When their child sees Santa, however, should parents have to say, "sorry, honey, Santa charges too much?" Come on, he's Santa! And, according to the story in the Sun, the price of actually sitting on Santa's lap is free - there's nothing that says parents HAVE to pay. The photography studio running the booth has made its own mistake there.

Personally, I try to take my daughter out to see Santa when he's working for charity, where my fee for the crappy picture goes straight into the charity's coffers - and the "photographer" volunteering for the day is more than happy to let me shoot away.

Image: Root Cellar

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Miss Piggy Wants a Bailout For Christmas

Brett Singer — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 22:30:00 GMT

I'm going to backtrack now on something I said earlier. I was bemoaning (OK, fine, I was whining) that Disney, who now own the Muppets, were going to ruin what I feel are great characters, thereby destroying the possibility that future generations will derive pleasure from Kermit and Company.

Are you sitting down?

I may have been wrong.

Various Muppets appeared on The Today Show this morning to promote their new holiday special, 'A Muppets Christmas: Letters to Santa' (airing on NBC tonight at 8pm EST; Newsday gives it an A). (No, I don't mean to imply that Tom Cruise, who also was on this morning, is a Muppet. Although that would explain a lot.) The best part, in my opinion, was Miss Piggy, who as far as I know is still being played by the great Frank Oz.

It's not even that what she said was so hysterically funny. But the way that the hosts just sit and chat with her as if she were something other than felt never gets old to me.

Anyway, here are two clips from Miss Piggy's recent appearance, plus one from earlier this year where the Muppets took over the show and Miss Piggy tied up 'Law & Order' star Christopher Meloni with crime scene tape. Good times, good times.

Miss Piggy Wants a Bailout

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Miss Piggy on Today Show

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Older: Muppets Take Over Today Show

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Muppets Take Over the Today Show and Miss Piggy Ties Up Christopher Meloni

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Hopefully these frequent Muppet appearances will get my kids interested in the characters once they outgrow Sesame Street. I grew up loving The Muppet Show, and enjoyed the same shows on DVD with my first son. (The second one doesn't seem interested yet.) With such a multitude of viewing choices out there, reminding us about the Muppets can't be a bad thing.

So there you go! I may have been wrong about Disney and their treatment of the Muppet property. Happy holidays, everyone.

(NOTE: Thank you to the commenter below who points out that the embeds of these videos aren't working. Go to MSNBC.com to find them.)

Source: MSNBC

Image: NYTimes

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Santa Reinvented: Decidedly Naughty and Passing for German

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 19:00:00 GMT

If kids from 1907 were around today, they would be sorely disappointed in the lack of technological advancements Santa has made in the last century. The picture to the right is taken from a 1907 children's book, depicting what Santa would look like in 100 years. Screw the rein deer, our predecessors seemed to think. Santa's gonna be powered by a fan. And forget the sleigh; give the old man what Jezebel has not inaccurately termed a "dildo-shaped blimp."

In more inappropriate Santa news, The Guardian asked 10 contemporary artists to "reinvent the image of Father Christmas." The results include bikinis, beer bellies, strangulation, and Barack Obama. To give just one example by the artist Juergen Teller:

Now there's a Santa your kids would probably rather not meet.

Another artist, Rob Smith, included a cautionary tale with his Santa depiction:

"Last year, in the village where I live, I was asked to dress up as Father Christmas and give presents to the local kids. I was really flattered. I took the role seriously. I put on what I thought was a Scandinavian accent. When I asked what one little girl wanted for Christmas, she burst into tears....She cried, 'Father Christmas is a Nazi.'"

So the next time you try to impersonate a Scandinavian Santa Claus, make sure your accent is flawless.

Photos: Jezebel, The Guardian

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Bah Humbug - Santa Issued a Parking Ticket

SunnyChanel — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 18:00:00 GMT

There’s a simple reason why Santa generally parks his sled on the roof, to avoid getting parking tickets. But sometimes the mortal incarnations of Kriss Kringle has to settle for street travel.

While delivering toys in New York, a local Santa was issued a $115 ticket for double parking. Chip Caflero, a retired schoolteacher, was riding in a horse drawn carriage, along with a present packed SUV, handing out gifts and candy canes to neighborhood kids when a traffic agent issued a summons for the parking infraction.

"Talk about a complete lack of Christmas spirit…I stood up and yelled, 'Ho! Ho! Ho!' real loud to get her attention, but she just looked at me and scanned my car," Cafiero said. After she issued the summons, "I told her she was on my naughty list - but I had a kid on my lap or else Santa would have really let her have it," he said.

So do you think Santa is above the law?

Via AP/ New York Post

Letter to Santa: Make My Relative Stop Touching Me

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 18:02:00 GMT

This has to be the most heartbreaking wish list in the history of the world. And yet, I never imagined I would be this grateful to Santa Claus.

A nine-year-old girl from Texas decided to ask for something monumentally important for Christmas this year, giving a whole new meaning to the childhood belief that if you ask Santa for what you want, he’ll give it to you. The girl wrote a letter to Santa asking him to make one of her relatives stop touching her and her sister. She turned the letter, which may have been for a school assignment, in to her elementary school. It somehow got into the hands of a school counselor, who arranged for the child to meet with a children’s advocacy group.

As a result of the meeting, 55-year-old Andres Enrique Cantu, whose relationship to the girl is not being disclosed to protect her identity, is being held on charges of continuously sexually abusing a young child for four years. He faces a minimum sentence of 25 years in prison.

Thank you, Santa.

Photo: Jezebel

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JeanneSager — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 21:31:00 GMT

Poor Santa. For about four weeks, he gets to play bad cop - so we don't have to. For a month, every time they even think of being the slightest bit naughty, there's that warning "Santa's watching."

Is it any wonder they stop believing?

The little girl in my favorite edition thus far of Kids Say the Cutest Things here on Babble might be switching up her favorite holiday. Let me lay out the evidence:

Mom- you have to eat your peas. Girl- I don't want to. Mom- If you don't eat your peas then Santa won't come. Girl (mutters under her breath)- The easter bunny would never make me do this.

Poor guy's going to get a complex . . . or lose the battle. His cookie fix is starting to make more sense all the time.

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Vonage Offers Free Calls To Santa

Brett Singer — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Voice Over IP company (for the uninitiated, that's "phone calls through your Internet connection") Vonage is offering free phone calls to Santa, as long as you call St. Nick from one of their lines.

Vonage is bringing Santa to life for its customers once again with its annual 1-700-CALLSANTA program. Moms and Dads can help their children call and leave a message for Santa, and the recorded message will be sent to their e-mail address so they know exactly what their child asked Jolly Old St. Nick to bring them. Additionally, for ten randomly selected children, Vonage will grant their special Christmas wish, delivering a toy from their list in Santa’s name.

So I guess the idea is that your kids tell "Santa" what they want and then you buy it for them. Plus a few lucky tots will get one of their wishes for free. (Actually, that sounds more like a gift for the parents in this economy.)

But wait! There's more! If you call after 5pm on December 24th, "your children will hear Santa share the tales of his journey as he delivers toys around the world." So Vonage will help parents shop for their children, and also aid them in perpetuating the illusion that an obese but jolly man flies around every year in a reindeer-powered sleigh to deliver toys to boys and girls worldwide – provided they behave themselves. (I kid. And for the record, I actually believed in Santa for a while despite being Jewish. But it's fun to be Grinchy sometimes.)

Full disclosure: I'm a Vonage customer; I like the service a lot, and recommend it to anyone who asks. There are some little quirks here and there but the price and feature-set more than make up for that. And it's not like my landline phone is perfect.

Back to the point: I think I would have preferred if Vonage had offered to buy something for children in need instead of making it a contest, or donated a dollar for every call made to "Santa" to Unicef or some other worthy organization.

I also wonder if a phone is better than writing a letter to Santa. Don't kids have enough incentives to use electronic means to communicate? If I were raising Santa-believers (I'm not) I think I would prefer that they communicate their heart's desires/greedy toy wishes to Chris Cringle using the good old United States Postal Service.

Of course, as sins of the season go, this one is far lower on the list than matching outfits on the family Holiday card. And probably even lower than sending a Chanukah card with a big ol' fir tree on the front. So if you've got a kid, and Vonage service, give Santa a call. You might even get one of their gifts for free.

Source: Vonage

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Santa Shortage Strikes Germany

JeanneSager — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 14:31:00 GMT

It's no surprise the requirements to be hired on as Santa Claus in Germany are exacting. In Teutonic tradition, the engineering of a German Santa takes stock of the tenor of the voice, the quality of the accent, the background in carols. Are they asking too much?

Apparently, yes. As the European economy falters, there's one employer still searching high and wide for good candidates. Yes, Virginia, in Germany there is a shortage of Santa Clauses.

According to a report in London's Sunday Times, recruitment is off by German Santa placement agencies (yes, they exist) this year in ever section of the country. Compounding the problem is a record number of private parties being thrown by families trying to offset the grim economy with a little holiday cheer. They're trying to book a Santa, and the jolly old man can't make it.

If it sounds silly, check out the paycheck. These Santas - who work the malls as well as the family party circuit, make as much as sixty euros an hour. Using the latest exchange rate, that's about $76 an hour. To smile a lot and be nice to some kids? Sign me up for that gig. Of course, therein lies the paradox. They're good-paying jobs, but they're not handing them out to just anyone. One Berlin-based recruiter told the Times at least ten percent of applicants are turned away because they don't fit the bill.

What does it really take to be a good Santa? They want a low tenor of voice, an extensive repertoire of Christmas songs and poetry, a jollity and spontaneity and a love of children. To top it off, they can't be "too young." Considering some of the mall Santas I've seen here in the states (who'd put the drunk Saint Nick from the parade scene in Miracle on 34th Street to shame), it might behoove American Santa recruiters to take a page out of the German book.

Of course, we might then be struck by the Santa shortage. But wouldn't you rather have too few good Santas than an overabundance of Billy Bobs?

Image: Amazon

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Santa Claus Can Call Them For You

JeanneSager — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 17:56:00 GMT

There's nothing like standing on that long line for the mall Santa, finally getting there, and having your kid reel off his entire list to the big man while a tantrum toddler's screams drown the whole thing out.

The trouble with that unshakeable belief in Santa? They don't need to tell Mom and Dad what they want - "Don't worry Ma, Santa said he'd get it for me." Instead of trying to drag it out of them, a new site lets you order up a Santa call right to your house. Even better? They let you go back in and listen to the whole clip online.

I Am Saint Nick comes from the brains of a dad who was laid off from his job in the tech industry. Matt Steckler opted to harness the new Twilio telephoney technology to have a voice recording of Santa Claus call phone numbers plugged into the site. If the call connects, the recording asks people what they want for Christmas (note to parents: you might want to warn your kids that Santa is a little forgetful . . . and a very busy guy who won't be able to answer questions, the drawback to a machine making the call). After the call ends, the recording is linked to the phone number on the site, allowing anyone who knows your phone number to plug it in and pull up the message.

For parents who are uneasy, the site promises to abide by the federal Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, which allows you to listen to your child's message and ask for the recording to be taken down if you feel they divulged too much personal information, Simply send an e-mail their way.

Kids tend to be a little more forthcoming with Santa Claus than they do with Mom and Dad - or even Grandma and Granda, so this could be your best shot at finding out their true heart's desire. And who doesn't like to hear it coming from their sweet little mouths? So set up your call, then send the whole family online to take a listen.

Image: I Am Saint Nick.com

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Whole Family Stars in Play About Death of Santa

editors — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 18:03:00 GMT

Ever have an inkling that your family could go on the road as a successful entertainment act? East Village Inky scribe and Babble contributor Ayun Halliday (who memorably wrote about taking her children on vacation in the Balkans) is living the dream this December, appearing in a "a refreshingly apocalyptic holiday palate cleanser" called The Truth About Santa. Her co-stars? Eleven-year-old India,eight-year-old Milo, and playwright/father Greg Kotis (co-author of the musical Urinetown). Dates and details after the jump, or at Ayun's website.-- Gwynne Watkins

Clancy Productions and the Tony Award Winning Writer of Urinetown Reveals
THE TRUTH ABOUT SANTA
Beginning December 4 at The Kraine Theater
**Directed by Obie Winner John Clancy **
Presented by Clancy Productions

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus! And the terrible truth about who he is, how he treats his elves, and what his home life has become will all be revealed in THE TRUTH ABOUT SANTA. Will this Christmas be Santa's last? Will Mrs. Claus finally make good on her threat to submerge humanity in a lake of fire? Who are these children and where did they get their strange powers?

THE TRUTH ABOUT SANTA, the new play by Tony Award Winner Greg Kotis (Urinetown) is a refreshingly apocalyptic holiday palate cleanser.
Directed by Obie Award winner John Clancy (Americana Absurdum, Fatboy)
Presented by Clancy Productions
Three week only!
Previews begin December 4 at The Kraine Theater, NYC.

The production stars Clay Adams, Bill Coelius, Jeff Gurner, Lusia Strus and the entire Kotis family: Greg, India (age 11), Milo (age 8) and Ayun Halliday (Kotis' wife, and mother of the aforementioned children, both onstage and off).

****Please note: although this dysfunctional family comedy features
children, it is NOT FOR CHILDREN-- adults and extremely skeptical
tweens only, please. Kotis' children have been apprised that the
red-suited man onstage is not really Santa and thus do not mind too terribly much when he "dies".

THE TRUTH ABOUT SANTA runs December 4 -20, Wednesday - Friday at 8pm and Saturday at 5pm and 8pm.
The Kraine Theater is located at 85 East 4th Street (between 2nd & 3rd Aves), NYC. Tickets are $18, available at 212-868-4444 or http://clancyproductions.com/.

World Famous Atheist To Write Children's Book

Brett Singer — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Richard Dawkins hates fairies. That's not a homosexual slur. He also hates "wizards and magic wands and things turning into other things." And he's not sure if children should be exposed to such ideas.

From the New York Times:

Having sufficiently inflamed the passions of his adult readers with “The God Delusion,” his treatise on rationalism and atheism, the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins…is writing a book for children. Dr. Dawkins said [the] book that would explore children’s relationships with fairy tales and encourage them to think about the world scientifically rather than mythologically. “I would like to know whether there’s any evidence that bringing children up to believe in spells and wizards and magic wands and things turning into other things — it is unscientific, I think it’s antiscientific…Whether that has a pernicious effect, I don’t know.”

It's important to note that the book does not have a publisher or release date, according to the New York Times. But Dawkins' "The God Delusion" has sold quite well, so if he does pen something along the lines of, "Stop Believing in Wizards You Dopey Kid" or "The Harry Potter Delusion", he'll probably find someone willing to print it.

The blog GBG Atheist News (GBG stands for "god be gone") has a post from 2007 that quotes Dawkins as saying, "i might try to do a children's book about how to think for yourself and how to ask questions about interesting topics and how you might go about answering them, Which might be subversive to religion but i don't think would be explicit about that" (apologies for punctuation; apparently this particular group of atheists don't capitalize the letter "I" and do whatever they feel like doing with commas). Dawkins recently said that Harry Potter and other stories "could have a 'pernicious' effect on children." (dailymail)

Interestingly, there are some people who dislike the Potter books because they feel they are anti-religious -- those who think it promotes witchcraft and/or Satanism and/or other evil things. (Like these fun folks who burned a pile of Potter books.)

Obviously if a child is 14 and still believes firmly that fairies exist, that might be a bit odd. But I think it's a parent's job to dispel any "delusions" before they become problematic. Heck, I believed in Santa Claus for the first few years of my life, and I'm Jewish. I turned out OK.

Source: nytimes
Image: dailymail

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The 6 Creepiest Marketing Campaigns Aimed at Children

Cole Gamble — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Our friends at Cracked have done it again, revealing the dark forces at work against our children. Among the evils preying upon our kids? Lucky Charms, Abercrombie and Fitch, Santa Claus and Rachel Leigh Cook.

So what terrible things are they telling our children?

Here are some highlights from the Cracked piece:

1 900 Santa Scam

This 900 number commercial asked kids to hold the phone up to the TV while the TV played touch tones that actually made the phone dial the number and let the phone bill crank into high gear.

Back to School Sleeping Pills

Rozerem, the sleep medication with Abraham Lincoln and a beaver in its ads, starting targeting its drug to kids. Or at least that’s the way it seemed. In 2006 they aired a commercial that stated, "Rozerem would like to remind you that it's back to school season" over images of school kids and classrooms and buses. No thanks, I’ll keep my kids off the drugs and stick to my tried and true method of getting them to sleep: booze. Always works for me.

Check out the whole article Here.

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They Like Big Butts, and They Can Not Lie: Survey Finds Men Prefer Bigger Body Sizes

Baby Cages: The 5 Baby Products that Should be Illegal

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The 6 Creepiest Marketing Campaigns Aimed at Children

The Sh*t List: 10 Bizarre (or Terrific?) Potty Gadgets

Satan and 9 other bad (but real) baby names

Nipple Jewelry: 5 Products Moms DON’T Need

10 Naughty Things We Do to Our Kids (but keep doing anyway)

18 Kids From One Vagina: Woman Births 18th Child

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What's Next, Shock Collars For Your Kids?!

7 Ways to Make Your Baby to Sleep Tonight

14 Lies Parents Need to Stop Telling Their Kids (Part 1)

Cole Gamble — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 17:00:00 GMT

You have the eat vegetables because big kids eat their vegetables.

If you've ever told your kid they couldn't leave the table until they finish their carrots while you ate ice cream straight from the carton, don't worry. You are not a hypocrite; you're just every other mom or dad in the world.

You are the prettiest girl/most handsome boy in the world

Can't be true. The law of averages makes it mathematically impossible. Are they very handsome and pretty? Sure, why not. But yours can't be the most handsome or pretty. Mine are.

Go to bed or I'll call the police

No wonder kids grow up to become adults with big problems with authority. Personally I never had the cops take me away as a kid (because I went to bed). But when it came time for me to call the cops on my kids, guess what? They didn’t come. CPS did though.

The cat “ran away”

No cat ever runs away, unless you mean running away to kitty heaven. This is a lie you can almost justify in your head because it sounds so close to the truth. “Ran away”…“ran over,” almost the same thing.

Santa, the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy

The big three. The Legion of Doom. Yes, these on the face are sweet pillars of youth and magic, but take a moment to examine what you are really telling your child when you pass on their legends:

Santa

Breaks into your house, eats all your food and maybe leaves you some tainted toys from China. And that's if he deems you as “good.” If not he leaves you coal (which with today's fuel prices might not be the worst gift). And how does he know whether you are good or not? He's been watching you. He's always got his eyes on you. You know who else watches you all the time and decides whether you are good or not? Buffalo Bill. If you get a stocking full of skin lotion, I’d move.

Easter Bunny

So there is this bunny. No, not a normal sized bunny. A seven foot tall bunny. A bunny who could dunk on Shaq. Anyway, this is an anthropomorphized bunny. He can talk and stuff, although all he wants to talk about is marshmallow. Not that you'll be able to pay attention to what he's saying, you'll be fixated on those six inch incisors and asking yourself, “what exactly does a giant bunny you have to do with this holiday?”

Tooth Fairy

Oh how these three love breaking and entering. This time a tweaked-out lady wants your teeth. Why does she want your teeth? What is she doing with all those teeth? Making human jewelry? Here's another thing to consider, what happens if TF shows up to a kid's house to find there is no tooth and she made a mistake? She doesn't just toddle off. This lady has gotten a jonesin' for teeth and she needs a fix. That's why she carries around a set of brass knuckles. Sweet dreams, kids.

Click here for part 2

More by this author: The 26 Most Disturbing Kids Movies Ever

Baby Cages: The 5 Baby Products that Should be Illegal

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7 Ways to Make Your Baby to Sleep Tonight

“Santa Claus” Pedophile Caught in New Jersey

Cole Gamble — Fri, 09 May 2008 19:01:00 GMT

A man know for playing Santa Claus and painting children's faces was arrested Thursday for pedophilia after an international manhunt.

Wayne Nelson Corliss, 58, is charged with producing child pornography. If convicted he faces 10 to 20 years in prison.

Colleagues of Corliss described him as a “witty” and “amiable” man. Because Corliss was connected to a child pornography investigation in Canada, this case marked only the second time Interpol has launched a public manhunt for a suspected pedophile.

I knew there was a reason those mall Santas creeped me out. Makes Bad Santa look pretty good in comparison.

Who Killed Santa Claus?

makeitadouble — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 20:26:00 GMT

It's a classic scene straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting. Christmas morning, children in pajamas crouched in front of the tree bursting with anticipation. Their weary bath-robed parents smile in the background as the kids tear open a gift wrapped box containing a book describing in graphic detail the murder of Santa Claus.

This is essentially what happened in British Columbia to Krista Saunders family this past Christmas morning when her two sons opened a gift they’d received from their grandfather. Based on the packaging alone the book of short stories, called “Whodunits: Little Giant Book and Kit” which comes complete with a flashlight and magnifying glass, seems innocuous enough and even comes with a disclaimer stating the contents of the book are appropriate for children over the age of seven. However, one of the stories depicts a famous chef being hacked to death with a meat cleaver while another shows a child seeing bruises on his mother’s arm, and then of course there’s the story titled, “Who Killed Santa Claus?”

A section of the story reads, “They discovered every child's worst nightmare, the lifeless body of Santa Claus. He was in a storage room his head bashed in by the butt end of a .44 revolver.” Apart from whether or not parents encourage their children to believe in Santa Claus and besides what are the ingredients of 3am night terrors for any second grader, how could anyone, especially a child, tell on first glance that the murder weapon was a .44 revolver? What is this: CSI: North Pole? You got David Caruso in an elf tunic collecting forensic evidence and monotoning one-liners like, “Some one’s been naughty.”?

The contents of the book so upset Mrs. Saunders that she took her concerns to the manager of the book store where the gift was purchased and demanded the book is pulled form the shelves immediately. Whoa, slow down Mrs. Saunders. I can see how the stories in this book could be upsetting and I even agree with you that the contents are not suitable for young children, but Canada like the United States has a constitutional law that protects the freedom of expression.

Get store credit and let your sons choose a book that you approve of, but don’t start demanding that a book be pulled from shelves simply because you don’t agree with it. This is no different than using ratings as a guide to limit the levels of violence children are exposed to in video games, movies and on television.

If you believe that the qualification on the packaging that states that the book is appropriate for children over the age of seven is wrong then contact the publisher and suggest they change it to include a warning explaining that some stories contain violence and mature themes that may be unsuitable for young readers.

Do it for the children Mrs. Saunders, and if not for them then do it for David Caruso.

Santa Claus Is Coming to Your Town

Kelly Mills — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 14:40:00 GMT

I guess Santa is a busy guy. In addition to overseeing the elf toy-making operations, and keeping a nice/naughty tally of every dang child, he's also been busy elsewhere. Joining PETA protests, visiting hospitals, participating in pub crawls, running up buildings--I hope he takes the whole of January off or he's gonna burn out. I mean, he probaby gets like, two hours sleep, tops.

I'm not even a huge Santa fan (sacrilegious, I know) but I enjoyed this Santa slideshow. It's nice to keep up on Santa's activities and to see how that big red suit gets used for all kinds of things. For those who celebrate such things, Merry Christmas to you and yours.

Rafting Photo: Reuters/Crack Palinggi

Have a Scary Merry X-mas Cuz Santa is Talking To YOU

Kelly Mills — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 18:33:00 GMT

I should've known I was in for it when I misread the e-mail to get a personalized video greeting from Santa as a "personalized video greeting from Satan." (As Mir from Droolicious said, ""Ho ho ho... why hello, BEELZEBUB! I remember you from last year... you live in THE BOWELS OF HELL, home of ETERNAL DAMNATION, and you turned FIFTY THOUSAND this year....") But in truth, the video greeting was more terrifying than anything Lucifer could have created.

You've heard of these? Using the magic of computer generated voices and video editing, you can get a video message for your child where Santa uses their name and certain key details to make the whole thing real special. Oh god, after the jump you'll see how special it can be.

See, Santa got my number on this one. And I'm very frightened. If you'd like to see what Santa said to me, click the link, but be forewarned. I am clearly not very emotionally mature, but while i was having some fun with this one I sort of ruined Christmas for myself. Now when I see mall Santas I turn and walk away the other direction. To avoid punishment.

Should Presents be Linked to Good Behavior?

Amy Kuras — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 23:36:00 GMT

When I was a kid, my parents had –and used – what proved to be a pretty effective bad-behavior smackdown.

Santa Claus. Yes, the jolly old elf himself. If I acted up, my parents had me convinced they had a direct line to Santa Claus and would call him on the phone and tell him not to come if I kept it up.

The fact that this works proves not so much that it is a really stellar parenting technique as that I was not the brightest kid. But it ties in with this Wall Street Journal post on the Love and Money blog, which suggests that presents should be an expression of parental love and affection, not a reward or punishment for behavior.

His post focuses on older kids, because let's face it, teens are a hell of a lot more likely to do something really heartbreakingly terrible. I pretty much disagreed vehemently with the post; I'm a firm believer that handing your kids expensive material goods when they behave like ungrateful little shits for what they have already been given is a good way to produce, well, more ungrateful little shit behavior. I wouldn’t take it so far as to remove presents for minor misbehavior or have a kid get nothing, but if they’ve crashed my car they don’t get an iPod, either.

What do you think? Is it smart to link holiday gifts to behavior, or should kids still get really nice presents even when their behavior doesn’t warrant much more than your posting bail?