Mark's Notebook


	I never came upon any of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking. - Albert Einstein

Ho! Ho! Is More Like Uh-Oh

Yahoo News, Los Angeles Times

Thursday 23 December 2004, 10:07 am
Keywords: News Articles , Health Topics

By J.R. Moehringer, Times Staff Writer

The questions from children these days are tougher than ever. True, for as long as children have climbed onto Santa's lap, they have been tenacious interrogators. But now, with thousands of children pining for a father or mother serving in Iraq or Afghanistan, the questions are as heart-rending as they are unanswerable. Can you please bring Daddy home from the war in time for Christmas morning?

Sometimes children stare intently and ask for peace on Earth. What's a Santa to say?

"I had a little girl on my knee," Victor Nevada recalls, "and she said she wanted 'a happy home' for Christmas. I looked up at the mom, and mom had bruises on her face. Now, what can I do? I can't phone the cops. I can't tell the child, 'Don't worry — Santa will send some hit men over and they'll take care of the old man.' I called Mom over, and she sat on my right knee, and mom and daughter faced each other and we had a little visit. What I could do was give that mom and daughter three or four minutes of peace."

On the Internet, a booming Santa industry is taking shape. Alan Kerr, founder of EmailSanta.com, says his website has received millions of e-mails in its seven years of existence — 500,000 this season alone. Many e-mails, he says, contain requests even more wrenching than those made in malls, as children turn to Santa for help not only with parents in the military, but parents who are sick, parents who are addicted to drugs and alcohol, parents who are abusive. So Kerr has teamed with child psychologists and police to develop special software that identifies those "in dire circumstances," whom he then directs to the proper social agency.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&e=5&u=/latimests/20041223/ts_latimes
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