Christmas is coming, and the distance isn't too painful this time of year. Just like home, we are inundated with commercials for toys, perfume and electronic gadgets. The stores are more frenzied, and everyone has that glazed look of someone planning one event while wondering how to shoehorn attendance at two more events into their schedule. We get to learn all about Boxing Day, and I am going to pass on the British Christmas dinner tradition of brussels sprouts.

One nice difference here is the absence of Christmas music blasting from every store you step into; a few of the bigger stores play it, but not too loudly, and you don't hear enough to get thoroughly sick of it by December 10. Although someone let the Spice Girls record a cover version of the Waittresses' classic "Christmas Wrapping." I've got nothing against the Spice Girls, but trying to remake this, one of my favorite songs ever, is just plain wrong.

But the one thing that I will miss terribly this Christmas season is Cliff's departmental White Elephant party. Veterans of a few White Elephant parties spend the entire year looking for the perfect item to bring, unless they were the unfortunate recipients of the Epilady or some hideous "decorative" item, in which case they have waited all year to rewrap it and foist it on some unwitting party. Sometimes they even forget they have those little treasures tucked away... I think we had a bottle of watermelon Thunderbird for about 3 years before I found it in our basement and threw it back into play. But it truly becomes fun when people bring something genuinely desirable, 'cause that's when the claws come out and the real "negotiations" begin. So enjoy, MilDiv, we're with you in spirit!