The 12 Posts of Christmas, vol. 9

A Christmas potpourri from the news columns over the past week. (Apologies if some of the links no longer work.)

• Christmas card arrives 93 years late (from CNN) - A postcard featuring a color drawing of Santa Claus and a young girl (and dated December 23, 1914) was mailed in 1914 and just arrived in northwest Kansas. The card was mailed to Ethel Martin of Oberlin, Kansas, apparently from her cousins in Alma, Nebraska. No one knows where it spent the 20th Century and the Oberlin Postmaster was surprise it never got thrown away. He said, "How someone found it, I don't know." Poor Ethel has gone on to her great reward, but the post office wanted to get the card to a relative. So it wound up in the mailbox of Bernice Martin, Ethel's sister-in-law. She believed the card had been found somewhere in Illinois. "That's all we know," she said. "But it is kind of curious. We'd like to know how it got down there." Wherever it was mailed from, it was put in a new envelope with the proper postage.


• Holiday mystery amuses police (from CNN) - In southern New Jersey, along the Garden State Parkway, someone is hanging Christmas ornaments on trees along the parkway. It started before Thanksgiving with two glass ornaments - a shiny red ball about the size of a cantaloupe and a smaller red oblong with gold glitter swirls - tied to branches of two large pines along the Garden State Parkway. Motorists easily spotted the bright Christmas balls. Then more decorations popped up. One week it was a glitter-enhanced green ball the same size as the original red one. Next came a smaller gourd-shaped ornament with red and gold glitter. This was followed by a smaller red ball with white glitter snowflakes appeared. Then a large silver bell appeared on a tree on the other side of the road, which was joined by a burgundy apple-shaped ornament about the size of a medium pumpkin. There are no notes or any other indications of who is responsible for the roadside ornaments. State police in New Jersey are stumped, "It's a mystery to us," said state police Capt. Al Della Fave. A spokesman for the New Jersey Turnpike Authority, which operates the parkway, wondered if the phantom decorator might be some frustrated husband whose wife won't let him cover the house with any more lights or ornaments. "This is probably some guy whose wife finally said 'Enough!" There were no reports of hockey ornaments, so it wasn't me.


• Hotel chain offers a room at the inn for Marys and Josephs (from CNN) - A British hotel chain is promising free accommodation to couples who share their first names with the couple from the Christian Nativity story. Almost 30 Josephs and Marys had already signed up for the free night's stay at the Travelodge, said a spokeswoman for the hotel chain. The gift is designed to atone for the "hotel industry not having any rooms left on Christmas Eve over 2000 years ago when the original 'Mary and Joseph' had to settle for the night in a stable," the company says on its Web site. The offer is good at any one of the chain's 322 hotels in the United Kingdom, the Web site says. The couples must bring proof of identity and must prove that they are in a long-term relationship. The spokesperson continued, "If you satisfy the criteria, you get a free night in a family room for two adults and two children, there's also parking space for a donkey if needed."