This first ran here on Christmas Eve of 2015. I repost it every two or three years to save myself a little bit of content creation for this blog and to offer photographic evidence that I was once cute…

The kid in the above photo is me and I don't care that you don't believe it. It's me. I'm not sure where it was taken — some department store, probably May Company — or how old I was. Seven? Eight? Beats me. But it's me. And is it my imagination or does Santa look like he's telling me not to tell my parents about something he said or did?

I don't have a lot of great Christmas memories left to share here. In all my years of blogging and telling tales of my past, I may have exhausted my supply. There weren't that many to begin with.

I do not remember ever seriously believing in Santa or of Christmas being that big a deal around our house. It was a time of love and joy and gifts but with my family, it was always a time of love and joy and gifts. The main features unique to Christmas time were a tree in the living room, a lot of TV specials I had to watch and a certain synchronization of presents.

Our family consisted of me, my mother, my father, my Uncle Nathan, my Aunt Dot and my Uncle Aaron. Nathan and Dot were my father's brother and sister. Aaron was Dot's husband. Nathan never married. One year, my mother's parents came out from Hartford and stayed with us for the holiday season. Then after Grandpa passed away, it was just Grandma one year. After Aaron died, we'd invite Aunt Dot's best friend Sally to join us for Christmas Dinner if she didn't travel out of town to be with other members of her family.

Since Sally was going to bring me a present, I felt I should get her one…and I never knew what to get for her. All she seemed to want was that I address her as "Aunt Sally" and you couldn't wrap that and put it beneath the tree. I think I usually gave her candy but the real gift was that I'd make the card out to "Aunt Sally." The rest of us were real good at taking the gift-selecting burden off each other by hinting with a minimum of subtlety as to what we wanted.

So we usually had six or less people at the table…and then as people died, it went down to five and then four…and at some point, it seemed a bit depressing to have much of a celebration at Christmas. It just reminded those of us who were left of those of us who were not.

At any given assemblage around the table, at least one person was Jewish and one was Catholic — and then you had me who had never been Bar Mitzvahed but identified as more-or-less Jewish but really had a foot in both camps. Early in my childhood, there had been a bit of polite, respectful debate about the co-existence of the two faiths in one family and then there had been that ghastly mistake of enrolling me in a Sunday Hebrew school. But the religious situation was never that serious nor was it divisive. There didn't seem to be any point to it.

One reason I find the whole current "War on Christmas" thing so phony is that each year I intermingled with people of different religions and there was never an issue. Not for one second did anyone attach any significance to wishing someone "Season's Greetings" instead of "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Hanukkah" instead of some other preferred form.

Not just in our house but throughout the neighborhood and at school, one good wish was as innocent and friendly as another. No hidden meanings or schemes to demean any faith were inferred or assumed. "Happy Holidays" meant "I hope your holidays (whatever they may be) are happy for you." It's amazing that some people have become convinced that that innocent little pleasantry could ever mean something menacing.

I've always felt that way about religious preference or even bigotry. Just let everyone be whatever they want to be and respect it. I feel the same way about racial prejudice or about prejudice over sexual orientation. If you just respect that others are what they are, it works out fine. It only becomes a war if you somehow feel threatened and choose to start one.

Getting back to the photo up top: I've been staring at it, trying to figure out what was on my mind when it was taken. This is a guess but I think it's a good one.

I never really believed in Santa…or if I did, I didn't believe the guy in the red suit at the May Company was the real Santa because — you know — he'd be too busy just before Christmas to sit around a department store all day. Besides, I was well aware there was a Santa down the street at Bullock's Department Store and another one over in Beverly Hills at Robinson's and what about that Santa outside on Wilshire Boulevard near Rodeo Drive who was out there all day ringing a bell for some charity and posing for photos?

So if I did ever believe there was a real Santa Claus — and I don't recall that I did — I'd figured out that I couldn't meet him or sit on his lap. The guy at May Company was some outta-work actor or someone they'd hire to impersonate The Man Himself to draw customers into their store. At that age, thinking like that is not cynicism. It's figuring out the world around you and all the fibs — some of them, no doubt well meant — that you need to overcome if you're ever going to grow up.

By the time this photo was taken, I knew there was no Santa. So I'm thinking I was pressured by some relative with the camera to get in the line to sit on the impostor's lap…and what was on my mind was probably something like this: "What am I supposed to do here? Pretend this guy is the real Santa, meaning that I go along with a fraud? Tell him my list of stuff I want this year? Or maybe I should rip that fake beard off him and expose him as the fake he is?"

I'm pretty sure I didn't do that last thing. I probably went along with the hoax just to get it over with.

Or knowing me, I may have climbed up on his knee and whispered to him, "I'll make a deal with you, fella. If you'll pull some strings to get me that Sneaky Pete Magic Set I want, I won't blow the whistle and tell all the kids in line that you're just an office temp in a fake beard!"

And history does show that one year, I did get my own Sneaky Pete Magic Set. So maybe this is the year that I learned that while racial or religious prejudice doesn't work, blackmail sometimes does. Have a Merry Whatever.

Here's that song again as performed in Ohio by Quire Cleveland…

Here's one of my favorite Christmas songs, especially when it was sung by Andy Williams.  It's "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" and here it is from one of Mr. Williams' many Christmas specials…

You know what I miss during the Christmas season? Mission Paks. Mission Paks were small crates of fruit — mostly dried, occasionally fresh — which I doubt anyone ever bought for themselves. It was something you arranged to have shipped to someone else for the holidays, especially if you were in a climate where fruit trees were still putting out fruit and they were in some climate where it snowed. The subtext was that if you lived in the latter, you could not possibly obtain lemons or oranges unless a kindly person in California or maybe Florida sent them to you.

I don't know when Mission Pak went out of business but I miss it. And yes, I hear you saying there are plenty of companies around these days that will overnight fruit to anyone anywhere. That's not the point. I don't miss sending or receiving Mission Paks. I miss their commercials.

Some folks think the Christmas season officially starts when the decorations go up in retail areas. In my neck o' the woods, it was when the Mission Pak commercials started appearing every three minutes on TV or radio…with their catchy jingle. Wanna hear it? I'm embedding a short video of that jingle but let me caution you: Once you hear it, you can't unhear it. And once it gets into your mental repertoire, you may hear it over and over and over, day and night, for as long as you live.

Here it is. Don't say I didn't warn you…

I don't even know if Mission Pak was a year-round business but their commercials and little pop-up stores would pop-up around November. One year, my mother worked a few weeks in a seasonal job at a Mission Pak store in Beverly Hills. She brought an actual Mission Pak home and I found its contents largely inedible…and not because of my notorious food allergies. The fruit was largely inedible because it had been treated with preservatives to make it shelf-stable for the next millennium or maybe the one after.

But I think they functioned like fruit cakes. The point was not to send someone something they'd enjoy consuming. It was to send them something so they'd think you cared enough about them to send them something, period. It may have also suggested that while you did care about them, you didn't care enough to go shopping and pick a gift you thought they'd like and to wrap and ship it. You just cared enough to call the Mission Pak number — which from all those commercials, I still remember — and charge ten or twenty bucks to your BankAmericard.

Most people never eat the fruit cakes they received, either. A lot of people just rewrap them and sent them out as gifts for others.

My mother, when she worked for Mission Pak, told me that someone told her that the most welcome Mission Paks were the ones that came in those neat wooden crates. You could dump the fruit or leave it on your coffee table for a few decades as a decoration…but the crate actually came in handy. People, I see, still sell them on eBay.

Anyway, that's just about all I know about Mission Paks and way more than you wanted to know. And I'm sorry about the jingle. If you're like me, you'll hear it in your head for the rest of your life…but after a decade or two, maybe not quite as often. Sorry to do that to you but you can't say you weren't warned.

Five comedians (well, six) who were arrested for saying naughty things on a stage. It was especially good of policemen to protect the delicate, easily-offended sensibilities of men who went to strip clubs.

As I'm sure you know, the House Select Committee on January 6 has issued a report that calls to mind the chants of "Lock her up! Lock her up!" if you change the "her" to "him" and note that, unlike the urgings to put Hillary Clinton behind bars, this report alleges actual crimes and includes evidence.

I'm sure you have your own views of the committee's findings and recommendations. What you might not have is a copy of the summary of the report. If you want to read or download all 154 pages of it, here's a link. Spoiler Alert: The butler didn't do it but Trump will probably throw him and everyone else under the bus.

This is the Gay Men's Chorus of Los Angeles…

Every time I post a number of videos within a short time span, I get several of these…

I'm sure you're receiving millions of messages telling you that you have your video links all screwed-up. In the box that's supposed to contain this one, there's that one and in the box that's supposed to have that one, there's the other one and…

Probably not. I probably have them in the right place. They're appearing in the wrong place on your screen because you need to flush your browser cache. Your browser of choice downloads all these elements and sometimes when it's too full of data, it gets confused on how to display them. Look up the information on how to clean yours out. You're probably also seeing the wrong fonts and maybe even some wrong images on some websites but they may not be as obvious.

From 1953: Gayla Peevey sings her hit record, "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas." Every holiday season, I run into at least one situation where a band of young carolers — usually four of them in Victorian garb — are taking requests and performing what's requested…just like in my Mel Tormé story.  I always ask for this song, they always know it, they always enjoy singing it — and everyone around enjoys hearing it…

Based on tests and consultation with my doctor, I'm declaring myself COVID-free. That doesn't mean I won't get it; just that I didn't get it as a result of my brief exposure recently. I'm masking in all public places.

As some of you have noticed, I removed from this blog the widget (that's what you call the little links in the right-hand margin) that invited you to follow me on Twitter. As of this moment, I still have my account but given how volatile and transitory "the rules" are there, I may be making a quick exit any second. It's kind of fascinating how unprepared Elon Musk seems to have been to run it. You'd think a guy shelling out 80 skillion bucks — or whatever he paid for it — would have some sort of plan for it before purchase. That's apart from "Fire half the staff." But no…he seems to be making it up as he goes along.

Because someone e-mails every day or so to ask this: At the moment, I only have two comic conventions on my calendar for 2023: WonderCon in Anaheim in March and Comic-Con in San Diego in July. Pandemic permitting, I'll be at both and Sergio Aragonés may be present as well. Maybe. I may or may not even leave my state next year…something I haven't done since June of 2019.

Lastly for now: Twice a day, I post on my Instagram feed the cover of a comic book I remember owning and loving back in the days when I was small and cute and most comics were a dime or twelve cents. Once in a while, you paid a whopping quarter for a "special" and thicker issue. From now through Christmas, I'm posting covers that relate to Christmas or at least Winter. Above are today's selections. I would post a Hanukkah comic from that period but even though the industry was founded mainly by Jews, there were no such comics.

Here's TCM's annual "TCM Remembers" video featuring some of the folks involved in films who left us this past year…

A message from John Oliver, who's on hiatus until February — and probably kicking himself that he's not on to report on the Trump NFTs…

And since I'm posting a Christmas video every night leading up to Christmas, I think it's only fair to post a Hanukkah video every night of Hanukkah…so prepare yourself for eight different renditions of the most popular Hanukkah song — that Public Domain Classic, Tom Lehrer's "I'm Spending Hanukkah in Santa Monica." We start with Mr. Lehrer's own recording of it…

And I'll also throw in my new favorite Hanukkah song which is not public domain. In fact, I don't know if they even got permission to parody the hit song on which it's based. This is the Jewish a cappella group known as The Maccabeats…

Interested in a latke recipe? I'll give you a choice. Here is Alton Brown's, which unlike all others I've ever seen doesn't use flour or matzo meal but instead calls for instant mashed potatoes. What would an Alton Brown recipe be without at least one ingredient or kitchen tool that no other human being ever thought of using before?

My mother's latkes — which of course were the best in the world — were made using a slight variation on Jenny Grossinger's recipe. Ms. Grossinger was to Jewish cooking what Antonius Stradivarius was to making violins. Here is that recipe and remember that the most important thing is to make sure you get as much water as possible out before you put them into the frying pan. Mr. Stradivarius did the same thing with his fiddles.

"Santa Baby" sung by Eartha Kitt. Wasn't she wonderful?

This is the most popular thing I've ever posted on this weblog. In fact, it's so popular that proprietors of other sites have thought nothing of just copying the whole thing and posting it on their pages, often with no mention of me and with the implication that they are the "I" in this tale. Please don't do that — to me or anyone. By all means, post a link to it but don't just appropriate it and especially don't let people think it's your work. This is the season for giving, not taking.

Yes, it's true…and I was very happy to learn from two of Mel Tormé's kids that their father had happily told them of the incident. Hearing that was my present…

I want to tell you a story…

The scene is Farmers Market — the famed tourist mecca of Los Angeles. It's located but yards from the facility they call, "CBS Television City in Hollywood"…which, of course, is not in Hollywood but at least is very close.

Farmers Market is a quaint collection of bungalow stores, produce stalls and little stands where one can buy darn near anything edible one wishes to devour. You buy your pizza slice or sandwich or Chinese food or whatever at one of umpteen counters, then carry it on a tray to an open-air table for consumption.

During the Summer or on weekends, the place is full of families and tourists and Japanese tour groups. But this was a winter weekday, not long before Christmas, and the crowd was mostly older folks, dawdling over coffee and danish. For most of them, it's a good place to get a donut or a taco, to sit and read the paper.

For me, it's a good place to get out of the house and grab something to eat. I arrived, headed for my favorite barbecue stand and, en route, noticed that Mel Tormé was seated at one of the tables.

Mel Tormé. My favorite singer. Just sitting there, sipping a cup of coffee, munching on an English Muffin, reading The New York Times. Mel Tormé.

I had never met Mel Tormé. Alas, I still haven't and now I never will. He looked like he was engrossed in the paper that day so I didn't stop and say, "Excuse me, I just wanted to tell you how much I've enjoyed all your records." I wish I had.

Instead, I continued over to the BBQ place, got myself a chicken sandwich and settled down at a table to consume it. I was about halfway through when four Christmas carolers strolled by, singing "Let It Snow," a cappella.

They were young adults with strong, fine voices and they were all clad in splendid Victorian garb. The Market had hired them (I assume) to stroll about and sing for the diners — a little touch of the holidays.

"Let It Snow" concluded not far from me to polite applause from all within earshot. I waved the leader of the chorale over and directed his attention to Mr. Tormé, seated about twenty yards from me.

"That's Mel Tormé down there. Do you know who he is?"

The singer was about 25 so it didn't horrify me that he said, "No."

I asked, "Do you know 'The Christmas Song?'"

Again, a "No."

I said, "That's the one that starts, 'Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…'"

"Oh, yes," the caroler chirped. "Is that what it's called? 'The Christmas Song?'"

"That's the name," I explained. "And that man wrote it." The singer thanked me, returned to his group for a brief huddle…and then they strolled down towards Mel Tormé. I ditched the rest of my sandwich and followed, a few steps behind. As they reached their quarry, they began singing, "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…" directly to him.

A big smile formed on Mel Tormé's face — and it wasn't the only one around. Most of those sitting at nearby tables knew who he was and many seemed aware of the significance of singing that song to him. For those who didn't, there was a sudden flurry of whispers: "That's Mel Tormé…he wrote that…"

As the choir reached the last chorus or two of the song, Mel got to his feet and made a little gesture that meant, "Let me sing one chorus solo." The carolers — all still apparently unaware they were in the presence of one of the world's great singers — looked a bit uncomfortable. I'd bet at least a couple were thinking, "Oh, no…the little fat guy wants to sing."

But they stopped and the little fat guy started to sing…and, of course, out came this beautiful, melodic, perfectly-on-pitch voice. The look on the face of the singer I'd briefed was amazed at first…then properly impressed.

On Mr. Tormé's signal, they all joined in on the final lines: "Although it's been said, many times, many ways…Merry Christmas to you…" Big smiles all around.

And not just from them. I looked and at all the tables surrounding the impromptu performance, I saw huge grins of delight…which segued, as the song ended, into a huge burst of applause. The whole tune only lasted about two minutes but I doubt anyone who was there will ever forget it.

I have witnessed a number of thrilling "show business" moments — those incidents, far and few between, where all the little hairs on your epidermis snap to attention and tingle with joy. Usually, these occur on a screen or stage. I hadn't expected to experience one next to a falafel stand — but I did.

Tormé thanked the harmonizers for the serenade and one of the women said, "You really wrote that?"

He nodded. "A wonderful songwriter named Bob Wells and I wrote that…and, get this — we did it on the hottest day of the year in July. It was a way to cool down."

Then the gent I'd briefed said, "You know, you're not a bad singer." He actually said that to Mel Tormé.

Mel chuckled. He realized that these four young folks hadn't the velvet-foggiest notion who he was, above and beyond the fact that he'd worked on that classic carol. "Well," he said. "I've actually made a few records in my day…"

"Really?" the other man asked. "How many?"

Tormé smiled and said, "Ninety."

I probably own about half of them on vinyl and/or CD. For some reason, they sound better on vinyl. (My favorite was the album he made with Buddy Rich. Go ahead. Find me a better parlay of singer and drummer. I'll wait.)

Today, as I'm reading obits, I'm reminded of that moment. And I'm impressed to remember that Mel Tormé was also an accomplished author and actor. Mostly though, I'm recalling that pre-Christmas afternoon.

I love people who do something so well that you can't conceive of it being done better. Doesn't even have to be something important: Singing, dancing, plate-spinning, mooning your neighbor's cat, whatever. There is a certain beauty to doing almost anything to perfection.

No recording exists of that chorus that Mel Tormé sang for the other diners at Farmers Market but if you never believe another word I write, trust me on this. It was perfect. Absolutely perfect.