For a good part of the month I've been trying to wrap my thoughts around a Christmas column but I can't.

By this time last year I would have already laid down some serious post-modern thoughts on the season but it snuck up on me too quickly, not even giving serious thought to what's hot and what's not this year for the young'uns to wake up to on Christmas morning.

Instead, I've been asking random sources I talk to about meaty subjects like racial divides and what we do to mend them. They have no answers, one saying you can't, one of my black sources actually saying it's the younger generation of black kids dynamiting the bridge to healing, another black source wholeheartedly agreeing with him.

Somewhere in the middle is the truth, but I've given up on trying to solve the race question because it goes back too far, too many lies handed down from generation to generation on both sides for it to be stopped now.

If you want to live your life dreaming of the day the South rises again, have at it. If you want to live your life having nightmares that all white people dream of the day the South rises again then don't let me interrupt your sleep.

I just sit trapped in the middle trying to wrap my thoughts around a Christmas column.

I thought I had a nice Christmas column on giving some poor, homeless man a dollar last Saturday, along with all the spare change I had in the car. That he had a kitten with him gave him sympathy points. I had visions in my head of turning this into some earnest yarn about how I found the true meaning of Christmas. Turns out this man was arrested for possession of crack cocaine, according to the police blotter. So much for that one and, no, I don't know what happened to his kitty cat. Truth is, I feel a little duped and I'm not a big fan of cats.

I don't feel beholden to write a Christmas column, although I'd like to, just because it's the journalism thing to do, to give some noble insight into the true meaning of Christmas, my thoughts on making the world a better place.

I tend to try to focus on the positive and try to ignore people like Sony Hackers, like people who start rumors that the Roanoke Rapids Christmas Parade will be under seige. When we succumb to the whimsy of the rumor mill, the rumor mill, hackers and terrorists win.

I wanted to see The Interview. It looked like it would be a fairly sophomoric movie, something that didn't require a lot of thought. Then that whole Sony Hackers thing ruined it.

I don't like hackers. They've tried to destroy this website a couple of times and now they've ruined the chance to, like I say, see what I think would be a fairly inane movie. I like inane, like to ramble on petty annoyances, like deordorant and how I have become disenchanted with Arm and Hammer and moved on to Old Spice. Old Spice bar soap ain't half-bad, either.

If you're still with me, there's no hope in this becoming the next Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus, which still stands as one of the best moments in journalism history, next to Woodward and Bernstein's Watergate reporting.

I have used the word Christmas throughout this piece, not because I'm scared of saying holidays, because it truly is the Holiday Season when you think Thanksgiving kicked it off, followed by Hanukkah, which started Tuesday, then Christmas and then New Year's. Saying Happy Holidays doesn't offend me because how do you know someone who says Happy Holidays to you might think you're a pagan and doesn't want to offend you? I'd say that's pretty polite.

This isn't the Christmas column I thought I would be writing but since I couldn't think of anything else to say it's my best effort because of the meaty issues I've been thinking about.

I've been thinking of people trying to make all criminals out to be these poor, misguided souls, kind of like someone would do to a dog who chews furniture or pees on the floor. “He cain't hep it,” they say, like talking to a baby, “He's just a wittle puppy.”

Local gang members? They're just rappers, right? Rappers don't commit crimes? Calling in a bomb threat to a government building? That's just a sign of poor circumstances, right?

I think what would Santa do and I don't see Santa bestowing gifts like Old Spice deodorant to rappers with a rap sheet because the only thing they're doing is laying down fresh beats, not laying a beat down to a rival or innocent toddler.

Somehow, I don't think Santa sees the good in scaring people witless with an idle threat of an explosive device placed somewhere in a courthouse, but that's just me.

Some guy this week posted an expletive-laced rant on how this website is nothing but a tabloid. Nothing would do my soul better than him trying to get the information he thought I should get when I asked all the pertinent questions I thought should be asked.

I might even give him a dollar and the rest of the spare change I have in my car. That would probably be a Christmas miracle because with his potty mouth I don't see Santa giving him much this year — Lance Martin