In order to inject a little artificial Christmas spirit into this space, I thought I'd run this column from 2001, updated slightly here and there and edited to fit.

Every year I used to try to convince the publisher of this newspaper that we should print on Christmas Day, and every year he'd give me the same look. Look, I'd always argue, this is the online, interactive, laptopped, palm-piloted, live-feed world of round-the-clock, nobody-sleeps, keep-the-TV-on-24-hours-a-day news. What if they find Osama bin Laden, I'd always argue (well, at least since 9/11) and we're not there to report it? What if they find Jimmy Hoffa or Judge Crater, I'd always argue, and we're off somewhere nursing an eggnog?

Actually, I didn't always bring up all of those people, but I'd always get the look. Undaunted, I'd forge ahead.

Not publishing on Christmas Day is hopelessly quaint, I'd always argue. If we don't publish on Christmas Day, I'd always argue, we might as well be back in the black-and-white days of the Cold War, when maybe the guys at the Nike missile sites - the guys who were pretty sure that sooner or later bombers with red stars on their wings would come over the pole to blow up Pratt & Whitney factories like the one in Middletown (where, rumor had it, they were trying to develop an atomic aircraft engine so that our bombers could stay in the air practically forever, but it never panned out) - maybe those guys had to be on night-and-day, hair-trigger alert so the rest of us could sleep, but nobody else had to be, and nobody else was. And as long as we're going to be that old-fashioned, I'd always argue, we might as well be back in the days of World War II, when they hardly ever interrupted their regular programming for anything and nobody was ever on hair-trigger alert, which pretty much explains Pearl Harbor; or even longer ago, when people in newsreels walked much faster than today (where did they get the energy?) but nobody sat on the edge of his seat breathlessly awaiting the signing of the Kellogg-Briand Pact the way, nowadays, people gnaw their fingernails up to the elbow wondering which prodigy of talent is going to win "American Idol" or "Dancing With the Stars."

I didn't always mention all of this, of course, but it was implied.

Still, I guess publishers have other things to consider, like costs and stuff; and the fact that Christmas Day is a lousy day for advertising because by then everybody has done their last-minute shopping and also their last-last-minute shopping and their last-last-last-minute shopping as well, so if they have any more shopping to do, they're going to have to do it at the corner gas station (where, by the way, you'd be surprised what they have); and the fact that so many of our readers rely on paperboys and papergirls (sorry; "youth carriers") to bring them their papers, but we've never asked those carriers to drag themselves out of bed on Christmas Day to schlep R-Js around when they'd much rather be snooping under the Christmas tree.

When I first came here, shortly after the Franco-Prussian War, there were four or five holidays a year when we didn't publish. Then, sometime after the Sunday edition was introduced, we cut out all of those days off - except Christmas. So maybe I should leave it at that and stop arguing.

Truth to tell, the publisher and I don't actually go through this whole rigmarole every year. It's sort of like Mr. Goodrow, my high school history teacher, who liked to say that his classroom was a perfect democracy.

That is, there was only one vote: his.

Reach Glenn Richter at grichter @record-journal.com or (203) 317-2222