Sites offer holiday spirit whatever your faith

BY LARRY MAGID
Special to the Mercury News

If you have any doubts as to the existence of Santa Claus, I urge you to visit www.usps.gov/letters/ and click on ``Dear Santa'' where the U.S. Postal Service officially proclaims, ``Yes Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus.''

You also will find letters from elementary school children to Santa that the Postal Service posted just before sending them off to the North Pole.

And if you want to read the rest of the story, ``Yes Virginia, There is a Santa Claus,'' first published in the 1897 New York Sun, you can find it and other holiday stories at www.santaland.com.

You also will find lots of good Christmas stories, recipes, greeting cards and activities at www.santa.com. Log on today between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. for a live chat with Santa. (The chat itself is on Talkcity.com but there is a link from Santa.com.)

There are, of course, lots more Christmas sites as well as sites dedicated to Hanukkah and the African-American and Pan-African holiday of Kwanzaa, which is celebrated from Dec. 26 through Jan. 1.

Chanuka.com is one of many sites that have stories, recipes, blessings, activities (including the dreidel game) and songs. In addition to the traditional songs like ``I Have a Little Dreidel,'' you also can listen to and read the lyrics from Adam Sandler's hysterical ``The Chanukah Song.''

One of the things my family enjoys every holiday season is looking at Christmas lights. There are indeed some impressive displays near our home in Silicon Valley, but if you want to check out the ultimate display of Christmas lights, go to www.planetchristmas.com where Chuck Smith shows off pictures of his house in Franklin, Tenn., which this year dons ``53,205 miniature Christmas lights, 2.1 miles of wire to connect everything, 192 computer-controlled circuits and two X-10 circuits.''

And lest you think he pays a king's ransom in electric bills, he will pay only $46 this season to light this extravaganza because his display is controlled by a simple PowerBASIC program, running under MS-DOS on a 300 megahertz Pentium PC, which turns the lights on and off in a ``10-minute show.''

Ever in search of cool holiday sites, I turned to my handy copy of The Internet Kids and Family Yellow Pages by Jean Armor Polly (www.netmom.com) that lists numerous places of holiday cheer, including www.noradsanta.org, where the North American Aerospace Defense Command tracks the exact location of Santa's sleigh.

Netmom also recommends Ginger Lane Kitchens (www.gingerbread lane.com), where you can learn everything there is to know about making and icing gingerbread houses as well as decorative holiday candies.

Looking for information about Christmas celebrations in other lands? Techdirect.com/
Christmas has information about how the holiday is celebrated in Mexico, Iceland, Ireland and other countries. There is even a page that lets you send a Christmas card in Polish.

There are, of course, lots of Kwanzaa sites, but if you want the ``official'' one, go to www.officialkwanzaawebsite.org, which is operated by Kwanzaa creator Maulana Karenga. There are details on preparations, a discussion on the values of Kwanzaa and a frequently asked questions (FAQ) section that I found very informative.

You will find more on Kwanzaa at www.theholidayspot.com/kwanzaa, including recipes, greeting cards, the history of the holiday and notes on how to celebrate the holiday.

It's not uncommon for families to celebrate two or even all three of the major December holidays and there is a Web site, called mixed
blessings.com with interfaith products and greeting cards ``in the spirit of diversity.'' The multicultural greeting cards are paper only -- it doesn't have virtual ``e-cards'' -- but there are online samples that are funny and touching.

Sending messages to Santa is a time-honored tradition, but there are some new issues in the age of the Internet. Santa is very concerned about your children's privacy and told me in e-mail that he wants children to be especially careful before revealing any personal information over the Internet, even to Santa. He worries that an elf, a reindeer or someone else might accidentally divulge the information to the wrong person.

If a child is to use one of the Web sites like www.emailsanta.org, it's important that Mom or Dad read the privacy policy. Even if there is a good privacy policy in place, don't let your child disclose his or her last name, address, phone number or any other personally identifying information.

If your child wants to send a detailed letter to Santa, I suggest you have them send it to you and promise that you'll forward it for them. You then can have Santa write back to them in care of you and you can forward it to the child.

Just explain to the child that even Santa needs to comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, which prohibits Web sites from collecting personal information from children younger than age 13. Santa could claim an exemption -- the act only applies to commercial sites -- but I'm told Santa has voluntarily decided to comply.