SANTA FEAR!

Ah, Christmas: a time when kids are thrown into a brand new set of social norms that don't apply at all to the rest of the year. Of course they're going to freak out once in a while; we've all seen it happen in the toy section of Wal-Mart, or at the freeway-exit McDonald's on Christmas-Eve-morning, but the place it ends up recorded is Santa's lap. In past years, the Chicago Tribune has been collecting these cheery photos and publishing them online and in the paper, but now that lots of other newspapers have tried their hand at it (I'm posting them at Thingsville as I find them), So, the Tribune editors have taken it big-time and published their own book of the screamy pictures. Buy it for your mom, to take that edge off her rosy memories of your childhood. She'll appreciate it.