http://www.christmas.com

By Bill Fick

I’ve been working in Russia for almost five years now, but this will be my first holiday season in Moscow without a trip home or at least an "out" to a fairytale winter wonderland such as Prague or Tallinn. After a particularly cold, windy, and slush-filled trek from my office earlier in the week, I developed a serious case of holiday humbug and started poking around the Web in a search for grim tidings to match my mood.

Naturally, my first stop was "GrinchNet", the unofficial homepage of the Grinch who Stole Christmas, "dedicated to the celebration of grinchiness around the world" at http://lamar.colostate.edu/~ddave/grinchnet.html. Set against a vivid green backdrop, this site contains a great collection of Dr. Seuss’ original illustrations, audio files from the TV cartoon, and sing-along lyrics to the Grinch song.

By the time I reached the pages on this site dedicated to the Grinch’s brothers in arms, Heat Miser and Cold Miser, my toes had thawed and I had a smile on my face as I chuckled through childhood memories.

The Internet offers a plethora of opportunities to wallow in holiday cheer with interesting virtual twists on tacky commercial charm. Maybe you can’t wrap your computer in strings of flashing lights, but you can adorn your website with more animated graphics, snowflakes, and jingling bells that I had ever imagined. Just have a look at http://www.christmas.com, http://www.santaclaus.com, or http://www.northpole.net. The homepage at http://www.northpole4kids.com contains links to over 3,000 holiday websites as well as interactive e-mail to Santa (he sends you a reply) and touching children’s drawings and greeting cards from around the world.

In preparation for the Big Day you can download special Santa tracking software from http://www.cyberhighway.net/~citius/santa.html, and I’m told that you can find out the temperature at the North Pole from http://www.weather.com/north_pole, although every time I tried it my Web browser froze up -- no joke.

Of course, the real question facing the expat stranded in Russia for the holidays is what to do about gifts for family and friends back home. The Internet offers a relatively simple solution to this problem as it has quite literally become the world’s largest shopping mall, where you can typically pay for your purchases by credit card and ship overnight by Federal Express.

Big department stores and catalog houses tend to have predictable Web addresses and holiday promotions (see http://www.macys.com and http://www.llbean.com), and you can find links to over 7,500 Web stores in the virtual shopping center at http://www.internet-mall.com. The best part is that you don’t have to suffocate in crowds or fight for a parking place, although if you try to use these sites during waking hours in the United States you will find the response time rather sluggish.

A few particular items that caught my eye this year include wreaths made out of recycled computer chips and motherboards at http://www.wwwreaths.com and ornaments carved from Mt. St. Helens volcanic ash at http://www.ornaments.com. Getting a lump of ash in your stocking may sound like the proverbial dreaded lump of coal, but really these tree adornments are quite beautiful and unique.

What holiday meal would be complete without smoked ham and turkey? You can order either in special holiday packaging from the "taste of the South" at http://www.smithfieldhams.com. I’m not sure they would clear customs or arrive in time at this point, although you may soon find them in a gastronom near you because, the company hosting the website told me last week, a Croatian businessman has arranged to buy several million tons for shipment to Russia.

You can also find something special to suit more gourmet tastes from among the wine and cheeses at http://www.virtualvin.com.

To my knowledge no Russian Internet stores yet exist, which is suprising because the potential market seems enormous.

There is also a real dearth of holiday information on the Russian Web. The only site I could find from a search on the keywords "Christmas" and "Russia" was a page by a Russian emigre child in Denmark on a Swedish website (http://www.alonet.se/~bernadot/christmas/9.html. It contains an apologetic explanation that in Russia New Year’s is really the big holiday, followed by a children’s yelka (fir tree) song.

But perhaps that’s just as well; Russian can be a wonderful refuge from the holiday hype at home. On Tuesday evening I will print the text at http://www.cforc.com/kjv/Luke/2.html and then unplug my computer to enjoy some rare moments of real heavenly peace -- offline.