News-Record.com

This morning, the crawl on ABC's early newscast told me that Santa had begun his sleigh ride around the world.

This was a NEWScast.

I thought of all the local news programs that track Santa's journey on Christmas Eve. These are NEWScasts, too.

Like Al Tompkins, I'm a news guy and didn't know journalists could blend their principles with holiday mythology. Seemed contradictory to me.

Then I had children. And their nascent fascination with Santa merged with my own developing understanding of the role a newspaper should play with its readers. If you consider yourself a member of the community, you talk, you listen, you share experiences with each other. And you celebrate wonder together.

That's why, in our NEWSpaper, we published O. Henry's "The Gift of the Magi" across the top of the front page today. (Author William Sydney Porter was born in Greensboro.)

It's part of the magic of the season. Merry Christmas.