Christmas Eve

Alex Coolman GLENDALE -- Once in a while, even the people in charge have to take a break. At holiday times, Glendale's city officials are no exception. The City Council, which would ordinarily meet tomorrow, is on break. Various boards and committees that typically spend their time poring through stacks of documents are adjorned until the new year. And the employees themselves are staying away from their offices for the most part. They're celebrating like everybody else.

Gary Moskowitz ROSSMOYNE -- Rebecca Feliciano is amazed by her co-workers' Christmas spirit this year. Feliciano and the rest of the staff of Whole Foods Market Glendale signed on with the Adopt A Family Program this year to make sure one needy family in Glendale could enjoy Christmas. "Last year, we didn't do this and it really left a vacant spot in our hearts," Filiciano, the store's marketing specialist, said of their decision to adopt a family.

Crescenta Valley Sheriff?s Station detectives are continuing their investigation of a December incident where a mob of 10 to 15 people walked over to a neighbor?s home, dragged him out of his house and began beating him, his wife and mother-in-law while his children looked on. The incident happened on Christmas Eve around 11 p.m. when a man, 42, who lived in the 3000 block of Paraiso Way asked his neighbor, who lived in the 4900 block of Ramsdell Avenue, to keep the noise level down from a party he was hosting.

Robert Chacon Remember craning your neck up at night as a child during Christmas time to verify if that speck of light at the corner of your eye really was Santa's reindeer pulling his sleigh full of gifts? Or maybe you still look up at the stars on Christmas Eve? Either way, parents who don't want their children to experience that nagging sense of "was it or wasn't it?" can visit the Los Angeles Zoo, which has gotten into the holiday spirit and is displaying four reindeer in a Santa's workshop setting.

When I applied for the AFS year program to study abroad in Spain, I never expected to land on one of the Balearic Islands right in the heart of the blue Mediterranean. But lo and behold, here I am, on Majorca, the biggest of the five islands. Majorca is a beautiful little island complete with secluded beaches, tall whispering mountains and twisting cobblestone alleyways, all surrounded by a blanket of blue sky. It is actually so famously beautiful that some of the world's most beloved artists and musicians, including Van Gogh and Chopin, came here for inspiration.

Amber Willard SOUTHEAST GLENDALE -- It's starting to look like Christmas around the Wagner home, especially outside where they spent an afternoon stretching lights over two big bushes and the front porch overhang. "Now string that up at the end of the bush," Robert Wagner directed his 10-year-old son, Nick, who was perched at the top of an aluminum ladder in the frontyard of their hillside home. Together with wife and mother Joylene, the three got the job done.

  "The Gift" by Pete Hamill The temperature has dropped below 0, the dreamy lights of Christmas reflect on the fallen snow of Brooklyn's streets that are stampeded by the hustle and bustle of shoppers, school children and workers heading their way to their local bar for a drink. It is Christmas in 1952 and 17-year-old Pete is home from the war in Korea. The latest letters he had received from his girlfriend Kathleen made his stomach fill with nerves and his anxiety grew worse when he was the only solider off the train without a girl to meet him. Even his parents weren't there, but in those times you were lucky if your family had a telephone and his did not. Pete's father was an Irish factory worker and had always been a distant man to Pete.

Ryan Carter Santa did not stop at the picket lines this year, but with a little help from colleagues and special friends, striking and locked-out supermarket workers are making the best of the holiday season. "It doesn't feel like Christmas this year," said Chris Imamura, a produce clerk at a Ralphs store on San Fernando Boulevard in Burbank. "It's just another day." Imamura and others picketing outside of the Albertsons on Glenoaks Boulevard each pitched in a few dollars for their Christmas Eve party, which included their picket signs, a few large pizzas and a salad.

Robert Chacon Six people who are down on their luck gather in a hobo camp on Christmas Eve 1893, when a stranger known only by the initials O.P. helps lift their spirits and changes their fortune. Such is the premise of "An O. Henry Christmas," a play staged by the First Methodist Players at 7 p.m. today at the Carlson Fellowship Center, 134 N. Kenwood St. The actors are members of the First Methodist Church of Glendale. The play will be directed by 78-year-old Pat Paige, a 50-year church member who began a ministry acting group in 1988.

Terri Roberts Christmas -- that most wonderful time of the year -- is here again, and that means holiday sales, sugar cookies and fruitcakes and more productions of "A Christmas Carol" than you can shake a strap of sleigh bells at. Charles Dickens' 1843 chronicle of the Christmas Eve redemption of a miserly old man is probably the best-known story of the season next to the birth of you-know-who. And over at the Glendale Centre Theatre, the 36th annual production of this holiday heart-warmer brings glad tidings to audiences looking for the perfect family entertainment, and maybe even a little spiritual rejuvenation.