The Christmas Crazies Are Back

There's something about the holiday season that brings out the strangeness and the stupidity in some people.

For me that's part of the joys of the holiday. I sit back, entertained, watching people lose it in December.

Does Christmas drive people crazy, or does
it just attract the crazies?

Some fun examples:

WSVN, a television station in Miami/Fort Lauderdale, reports that two women stole some Christmas decorations from a Sweetwater, Fla. lawn and put the stuff on their own lawn, less than a block away.

I guess I can understand the logic. It's such a pain fighting the traffic, the crowds, the high prices to get the stuff to decorate your property for Christmas.

Maybe the two women figured it would be less stressful to grab the stuff from the neighbor. Besides, who could resist the decorations they stole. Especially the hugging penguins and the Mickey Mouse on a horse.

What the women didn't plan on is that the decorations' owner, actually gets out of her house and has been known to walk or drive at least a half a block. So it was inevitable she'd find her stuff and call the cops. The fact the theft was caught on a home security camera surely didn't make the police investigation any tougher.

On the opposite spectrum of these thefts, we have a guy who got into the Christmas spirit and tried to be helpful. In a story dating back to early November, WHIO-TV said a man broke into an Vandolia, Ohio home lit a candle, turned on the television and put up the family's Christmas decorations.

Well, how generous. Or not. The guy was apparently on drugs, according to the police, so his behavior was just erratic. But how could they tell it was the drugs? Isn't everyone's behavior erratic around Christmas?

In the "Isn't He Thoughtful" department, one Bob McCulley of the Pittsburgh area recently sent some nice holiday cards recently to about 400 of his friends and acquaintences. That's an especially impressive feat, since McCully, died at the age of 88 in August, according to the Pitsburgh Tribune-Review.

"Please don't call," McCulley's cards politely request. "I recently moved to a quiet neighborhood."

Apparently, an associate of McCulley helped with the cards this year because McCulley was, um, predisposed.

So happy holidays everyone! Including you, Mr. McCulley.