The Christmas season might be the time for everyone to take a break from their jobs, but not for robbers and thieves in Lake Clarke Shores, Florida. Surpassing its normal limit of only a dozen robberies per year, the place has seen 14 house robberies in the last month.

Come Christmas and one can find the Virgin Mary, the three kings and a few wayward sheep as the traditional Christmas nativity scene. But the nativity scenes in Spain have a smartly dressed peasant squatting behind a rock with his rear-end exposed. The statuettes of "El Caganer," known as the great defecator in the Catalan language, can be seen on the mantelpieces of collectors, throughout Spain's northeastern Catalonia region.

One police officer didn't know if people should call him the grinch after arresting a man for stealing Christmas gifts for his "Honey Bunny. " Richard Perez, 43 was caught stealing items from the hotel where he works as a security guard. A surveillance camera caught him leaving a hotel room with a covered cart.

Saying that Coca-Cola created the present-day Santa Claus for its advertisements, anti-Santa campaigners in Austria and Germany are fighting the commercialization of Christmas by asking vendors to ban him from their markets. The campaigners were able to persuade a market is in front of the Vienna city hall - the biggest Christmas market in the country - to ban Santa's image. Now the only Santa to be seen is the one in the middle of occasional "Ban Santa" stickers.

An 88-year-old Delaware grandmother tried to sue the U. S. Postal Service after she says she was accused of being a terrorist by a postal clerk while trying to mail her homemade fruitcakes. Lucille Greene mails about 30 fruitcakes out every year as Christmas gifts.