Candy Canes

A candy store that's been hand-pulling canes since 1942 must be doing something right. The flavors - such as cherry, wintergreen, orange cream, and lemon - are as wonderful as the colors, which means you'll have to decide if they are destined for your tree or your tummy.   - Ashley Primis Giambri's Quality Sweets candy canes, $7 a dozen, 26 Brand Ave., Clementon, N.J., 856-783-1099, giambriscandy.com .

What goes up, must come down. That applies to the 74-foot Norway spruce in New York's Rockefeller Center and the 13-foot candy canes that line the curb on the 100 block of Garth Road in Oreland, Montgomery County. Next to the usual street sign, there's a red-and-white placard proclaiming Garth Road Candy Cane Lane. The 20 or so single-family homes on this one block are illuminated each December with Santas, sleighs, snowmen, even a custom-made mailbox for special deliveries to the North Pole.

The handcrafted candy cane can be an unforgiving thing. Boil the sugar syrup too hot (or low) or long, and you've got an unholy mess. Forget the cream of tartar, and you've got grainy crystals, a version of which you'll want later, but, whoa !, not at first. You've got to knead in the oil of peppermint (or wintergreen or whatever) until it's well dispersed, a process started by poking a thumb in the doughy blob, then pouring the flavoring in. The red stripes? You've got to flatten out some of the firming candy until it looks like a rasher of cherry bacon, and keep flipping it so it doesn't get brittle.

Who needs a sleigh? St. Nick distributes candy canes to Cherry Hill from a fire truck during "Operation Santa Claus. " These escorts end Thursday - before Santa's other obligations.

The Egg Harbor Township Board of Education did not violate the religious and free-speech rights of a student who was not allowed to give out "proselytizing pencils" and "evangelical candy canes" during class parties, a federal judge in Camden has ruled. Daniel Walz, now 9, sued the board, with the help of his mother, Dana Walz, over three incidents at school. In the first, Daniel, then 4, had to take back pencils that he had given to his prekindergarten classmates and that his mother had bought for the religious message written on them.

Walter "Bud" Volk, 64, whom many children in the Fairview section of Camden and in Magnolia knew as Santa Claus, died Thursday at Kennedy Memorial Hospitals/Cherry Hill Division. A lifelong resident of Fairview, Mr. Volk began his role as Santa Claus about 25 years ago when he delivered candy canes door-to-door to children in Fairview while wearing a Santa suit that his wife and a neighborhood friend had made for him. During the 1960s he began to play Santa for the Fairview Youth Center and for the Sterling String Band in Magnolia, and often rode in a firetruck dressed as Santa during parades in Fairview and Magnolia, tossing candy canes and waving to the children.

Move over, Christmas stockings. These lights will knock your socks off. Some homeowners believe that displaying three singing Homer Simpsons beats just one single singing chipmunk, and that supercalifragilisticexpialidocious lights rule. So one evening, take the kids to visit neighborhoods with sparkling stars to spare. You could start in South Philadelphia, where traditions are often born. On the hidden 1700 block of South Smedley Street, the holiday lights are so bright, you could read a newspaper inside your car at midnight.

During the last week of the year, police patrol the neighborhoods of Bridgeport with special care, surveying each house and lawn for more than just the signs of a break-in or other holiday crime. They look, also, with an aesthetic eye, hunting for the three houses whose decorations best exemplify the Christmas spirit in the town of 4,300. Continuing a 10-year-old ritual, the borough's 15 officers, mayor and police chief then cast votes for one house in each of the three districts.

Red bows hung on evergreen boughs, white lights twinkled on candy canes, and even Santa and Mrs. Claus strolled by. But for Isaac Gonzalez, 13, it was all a bright blur Sunday morning as he made his way, with help, through the Cherry Hill Target store. "Which one do you like better?" 14-year-old Daniel Nguyen asked, holding up a purple and a pink Minnie Mouse doll as three other teens watched. Isaac, who is nearly blind and ordinarily guides himself with a cane, gazed in Daniel's direction but said nothing.

What goes up, must come down. That applies to the 74-foot Norway spruce in New York's Rockefeller Center and the 13-foot candy canes that line the curb on the 100 block of Garth Road in Oreland, Montgomery County. Next to the usual street sign, there's a red-and-white placard proclaiming Garth Road Candy Cane Lane. The 20 or so single-family homes on this one block are illuminated each December with Santas, sleighs, snowmen, even a custom-made mailbox for special deliveries to the North Pole.

A candy store that's been hand-pulling canes since 1942 must be doing something right. The flavors - such as cherry, wintergreen, orange cream, and lemon - are as wonderful as the colors, which means you'll have to decide if they are destined for your tree or your tummy.   - Ashley Primis Giambri's Quality Sweets candy canes, $7 a dozen, 26 Brand Ave., Clementon, N.J., 856-783-1099, giambriscandy.com .

The handcrafted candy cane can be an unforgiving thing. Boil the sugar syrup too hot (or low) or long, and you've got an unholy mess. Forget the cream of tartar, and you've got grainy crystals, a version of which you'll want later, but, whoa !, not at first. You've got to knead in the oil of peppermint (or wintergreen or whatever) until it's well dispersed, a process started by poking a thumb in the doughy blob, then pouring the flavoring in. The red stripes? You've got to flatten out some of the firming candy until it looks like a rasher of cherry bacon, and keep flipping it so it doesn't get brittle.

Three days before Christmas, Strath Haven High School suspended a student who wore a Santa suit to school. Bah, humbug! Senior Michael Hance said that three weeks ago he told principal MaryJo Yannacone that he planned to wear the suit. He said she laughed and didn't think he was serious. Last Thursday, he told her again that he wanted to wear the suit and hand out candy canes, he said. She told him it wasn't a good idea because it would be a distraction and candy canes could make students sick, Hance said.

Christmas lives in Technicolor at Bethanne Keirnan's Pleasanton, Calif., home. A half-dozen trees of all sizes and colors are bedecked with ornaments, candy canes, and anything else that strikes Keirnan's fancy. But it is the elves that are at the center of the extravaganza. Grinning elves, winking elves, smirking elves. They are dangled and draped on the trees, tabletops and furniture. They dance across the shelves and floors. They wave to visitors from corners and beneath plants.

As Christmas approaches, our mailbox fills up with shiny cards containing adorable pictures of people's children dressed in red and green holiday outfits. Each picture is perfectly composed and the children are all smiling widely as if Santa himself were behind the camera. When I was growing up, my parents also sent out a yearly Christmas picture of me, and my brother and sister. It sounded so easy: Dress us up in nice clothes, snap a picture, and voila! - instant Christmas memory.

Move over, Christmas stockings. These lights will knock your socks off. Some homeowners believe that displaying three singing Homer Simpsons beats just one single singing chipmunk, and that supercalifragilisticexpialidocious lights rule. So one evening, take the kids to visit neighborhoods with sparkling stars to spare. You could start in South Philadelphia, where traditions are often born. On the hidden 1700 block of South Smedley Street, the holiday lights are so bright, you could read a newspaper inside your car at midnight.

Jim Morrison recalls the Christmases of his youth as a magical time. The season commenced the day after Thanksgiving, when the entire family rode an early-morning bus from Haddonfield to Philadelphia, where they joined the crowds on the sidewalks awaiting the unveiling of the stores' Christmas window displays. "I knew exactly what Santa's elves looked like because I saw them at work in those windows," Morrison says. The kid-size monorail and giant tree at Wanamakers, the miniature train set-ups in hardware stores, the department-store Santas who gave out clear toy lollipops - Morrison remembers it all as if it were yesterday.

On a steamy summer Saturday afternoon, we were cruising on an interminable interstate. I was 9, wedged between my older brother and younger sister in the backseat of our station wagon. It was the first day of our summer vacation, and also my birthday. That year my mother planned the itinerary as a favor to my dad, who had been putting in long hours at the General Motors plant. Back when she looked at the map spread out on our kitchen table, Des Moines, Iowa, had seemed like a perfectly acceptable first-night destination from our Michigan home.