Silly students try to make it snow with chain letters, spoons and pajamas!

No, Virginia, Santa is not dead. The pictures are fake and from chain letters and got a news outlet in trouble No good comes of a bad joke.

Holiday Chain Letters

They come around again and again. It seems people forget they have already received or even forwarded them the year before, and the year before that.

This explains why the same old Halloween and Christmas jokes, stories, cautions, religious rants, and any type of holiday chain letters explode onto the internet every year. To a slightly lesser extent, Easter, American Thanksgiving and other holiday chain letters do as well. Unfortunately, Christmas is the holiday that gets the biggest wallop from chain letter forwards.

Email Scams and Security Threats at Christmas

Rudolph's Story can save you having to read a mushy chain letter forward and give you the real story all at the same time.

Ho Ho Hold It!What's the matter with Santa's laugh?

Businesses are getting into the act of starting forwards, usually this is because it's a way to promote themselves. This is called viral marketing.

Elf Yourself is a great example of this. It started in 2007 and returned in 2008.

Also in 2008 came another viral that would surely pass the defenses of even jaded netizens sick of chain letters.

Pick A Cake Takes The Cake 

a doggy Christmas video chain letter made the rounds in the 2008 Christmas season.

No, You Can't Send Holiday Cards to Any Wounded Soldier at Walter Reed But this site tells you what you can do to show support instead.

Soldier's Night Before Christmas is just one of many Night Before Christmas chain letters to go around every year.

The 12 Days of Christmas is the subject of many chain letters. One of these is a myth going around claiming that the song was actually a religious song written in code, the idea was again that Christianity was being outlawed, banned, not allowed.

Not true.

The real history of Partridge in a Pear Tree as well as the origins of the erroneous myth can be found here

There are so many droll jokes about the song as well; such as the letter from one lover to another, complaining about all the gifts in the original song. Another being one of the lamest ideas yet "The 12 Days of Fast Food" has the drive-through giving the person twelve bags of pepto, 11 pounds of blubber, 10 items of fast food 9 items of fast food etc. etc. etc. all of course, based on the puritanic anti-fast food or anything that tastes good food-cop propaganda trend scares of the day, and the stereotypical beliefs that practically looking at a burger will gain you a thousand pounds - oh, please!

So, how about something a little more on track? The Twelve Days of Forwards!

Site with some discussion about the aggravating "Rescue your religion!" chains that come throughout the Christmas season

In the Christmas season of 2007 came another paranoid "Our religion is being quashed!" chain letter against Lowes that made a big stink over what amounted to nothing more than an error. The Family Tree Frackus

In 2008, Halloween wasn't even over, and the paranoid inaccurate "Help save Christmas!" chain letters started.

No, Home Depot is not boycotting the word Christmas.

The infamous "Jesus VS. Santa" chain letter is full of sayings that tell you things like: Santa lets you sit on his lap, but Jesus holds you in his It is a collection of cheesy phrases containing reasons why Jesus is better than Santa, a thinly disguised paranoid pseudo-religious rant that contains undertones of the all too typical "Christianity is being threatened! Save it and pass on this chain letter that reminds people why Jesus is better than Santa!" It's a one-upmanship game that Jesus and both the historical St. Nicholas and Santa Claus as we know him today would strongly discourage. The Jesus Vs. Santa chain is posted on Kevin Murrell's blog Becca's blog Kathy's blog and many others.

Christmas Meme showcases blogs guilty of participating whether or not they tagged anyone.

Archive of some Christmas jokes passed around in chain letters The Ultimate Drunken Fruitcake Recipe Chain Christmas Carols for the Chemically Imbalanced joke chain posted on Necrosys's Livejournal

Angels in Indianna, The glurge chain about a family getting a bunch of stuff from people they believe were angels posted on Brandon's blog Angels in Indiana or "The Big Wheel" is an unlikely "Touched by an Angel" or "Highway to Heaven" type story if you take it literally and believe there really were Angels in Indianna. Or it could be taken as a story about an incredible outpouring of generocity on the part of some unknown ordinary citizens toward one family. The problem with this glurge besides the fact that it is a story passed around in chain letters is the way it is misused by way of inclusion in some versions of the "I Picked You" religious chain letter manipulation to get people praying an artificial prayer, and manipulating the reader into passing it along. The story is used as a means of getting people to pray more in the hopes that God will say "Yes" to them the same way he supposedly did in the story with these "angels." Used in this way, the tale becomes virtually worthless, and only the means to an end; which is always to get us passing it along.

Video Christmas chain letter that doesn't need to be passed on to teach people that Christmas is a time for giving. The Misha's Christmas glurge is an unverified tale about a Russian orphan boy who wanted to join Jesus in the manger to keep him warm and get some companionship for himself on Christmas. Like all unverifiable sad/touching chain letter stories, the underlying goal is to be spread as far and wide as possible, tugging at your heart-strings to get it done..

So how about forgoing the needless tissue-drenching chain letter story forwards in favor of watching a treasured Christmas special, spending time with the family, and giving something to the poor through a charity you trust instead?

Take a lesson from this post, It's Christmas, Relax and Enjoy It!