Anyone know how this thing works?

IT'S JANUARY. I KNOW THIS, since the furnace seems always on and we are slowly putting the lid on another Christmas. Just in time, if you ask me.

Here are just a few of the delicious things I ate over the holidays:

Prime rib

Sub-prime rib

18 pounds of cream cheese

Some very funky figgy pudding

A Santa hat

A chocolate fountain, pump and all

An entire elf

All in all, I think I showed remarkable restraint, except maybe for the elf, whom I mistook for a stuffed mushroom at Bill and Nancy's boozy party. Trust me, I find elves a little gamy and difficult to digest. Hiccup. Burp. And, no, they don't taste like chicken. Not at all.

Anyway, it was a good festive December, no complaints. My dear wife, Mother Christmas, took gifts to all the neighbors, including the Buddhists next door. I wonder what Buddhists think when they suddenly get a salami and cheese basket from someone they've never met.

In return, the Buddhists gave us Scotch.

"We sure won that round," I tell Mother Christmas.

"It's not a competition," she says.

It's not? To her credit, Mother Christmas gives gifts to pretty much everyone in the Western Hemisphere, without regard to religion, without any thought to receiving anything in return. Muslims get gifts. Atheists get gifts. Certainly all of our Jewish friends. (If you haven't received your present, rest assured that it's in the mail and will arrive at the doorstep very soon.)

Yes, Christmas seems to get a little bigger and more confounding every year. No doubt, this one will go down as the Christmas where all the moms got their own iPods, then begged their children -- is there anything worse? -- to help fill them with a few favorite songs. All over the nation, mothers are saying, "Please, just download some Kenny Loggins. Please? Just some Wham!? Pleeeeeeeease. . . . "

As any parent will attest, to be at the mercy of your own children is a special flavor of desperation. None of us should have to experience it. And it all seems to be happening way too soon.

"Get in the car, Dad."

"Why?"

"We're taking you to a nursing home."

"But I'm only 43."

"Just get in the car, would you?"

The kids seem born to this technology, a fact that makes them feel far too superior. Most of them would be hard-pressed to explain how electricity works, or even a basic light switch, yet they can do things with a cellphone -- build bridges, bake a cake -- that their parents can only dream about.