Thanks to an overblown chain email and a flurry of online notices, 4-year-old Jacob Hadcock of Mexico, New York has received upwards of 25,000 Christmas cards from total strangers this past week. Far from being "terminally ill," however, Jacob is responding well to treatment for his leukemia, his parents say, and is otherwise quite healthy. Read more...

See also: Christmas Cards for Nathan Elfrink

Text of an email advisory released today by the Tennessee Department of Correction:

NASHVILLE - An email transmission that is being circulated with claims of recent gang activity cannot be supported by current Department of Correction intelligence. The email appears to have been forwarded by a department employee but is not an official TDOC statement. The email states that gang members are using a new method to target women that involves sitting a baby car seat on the side of a road and attacking women as they approach.

While the TDOC recognizes the gang element that extends to members housed in state correctional facilities, we cannot substantiate any claims made in the recent email transmission. Therefore, the public is advised to use caution when forwarding emails that do not appear to be official documents.

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(UPDATED) The "eyewitness" who wrote a viral email describing a minor passenger disturbance aboard AirTran Airways Flight 297 in the Atlanta airport November 17 as a "terrorist dry run" wasn't even on the plane, airline officials said in a statement quoted by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Friday.

Tedd Petruna was booked on Flight 297, the statement confirmed, but his connecting flight from Akron arrived too late for him to board the Houston-bound plane. (NOTE: Petruna has responded that he was, in fact, on the plane and has a boarding pass to prove it. See update below.)

Read more...

NOTE: The Al Sharpton story is here. My apologies for the broken newsletter link.

If there is a more parodied poem in the English language than Clement Clarke Moore's "A Visit from St. Nicholas" (more popularly known as "The Night Before Christmas"), I don't know what it could possibly be. The meter of "St. Nick" is infectious, its rhyme scheme cheery and simple, its homespun, nostalgic imagery ripe for spoofing. In celebration of the holiday season, I give you a collection of links to some of the wittier (and, in some cases, just plain strange) homages I've stumbled upon online. Read on...

Further reading:
• Clement C. Moore: The Reluctant Mythmaker
• Are All of Santa's Reindeer Female?
• Christmas History, Traditions and Folklore
• Test Your Christmas Folklore IQ