The monolithic myths
Columbia City, Ind., has always prided itself on its Christmas decorations. Each year of my young life, I was shunted off to the Whitley County Courthouse on Christmas Eve to sit on Santa's lap and receive a bag of oranges and a bag of haystacks (those vanilla creamy things covered in chocolate). The line would be long because everyone did the same thing. When the ritual was fulfilled, we'd go the four blocks home to find that Santa had arrived. In a Christmas Eve family, the whole set-up was a little hard to believe.

