For most reporters, weather stories are the only assignments that are more dreaded than holiday stories. But I always enjoyed the challenge of finding quirky holiday angles. In the Thanksgiving day edition of the Washington Post 18 years ago, I wrote about the violent demise of a rafter of pardoned presidential turkeys. ("There were feathers everywhere," said the farmhand who had cared for the birds at Fairfax County's unfortunately named Frying Pan Park).
A year later, I took advantage of a newly established Internet link to ask U.S. researchers stationed at the South Pole how they planned to celebrate "a very white Christmas." ("These are lonely days at the South Pole," I wrote in the Christmas eve edition of the Raleigh News & Observer. "While the eyes of the world turn to the north, where Santa's busy packing his sleigh, the crew members at a remote U.S. research base at the other end of the globe toil like elves in anonymity.")
My enjoyment of holiday stories was one reason why I so enthusiastically agreed to help my wife Christine write this intentionally short-lived blog about the business of the winter holidays a few years back. And it's also why I have thought about resurrecting the blog every year since.
Well, now that retailers are embracing social media to provide a continuous stream of holiday deals to their customers, I figure I can go the same direction with the Motley Yule, which I've just relaunched as a Twitter feed.
Follow along between now and Christmas 2011: @MotleyYule.
And happy holidays!
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