Riz Rollins tells a story about himself, his brother, his grandmother and a guy in a Chicago department store they hope has some pull with Santa.

What if do-gooders patrolled department stores, keeping tabs on the Santas? We hear this story, of The Most Fantastic Crimefighter The World Has Ever Known: Chickenman. Recorded for This American Life by Dick Orkin, Christine Coyle and Rod Roddy at the Radio Ranch in Los Angeles.

Students in a French language class in Paris try to explain holiday customs to a woman from Morocco, and somehow everything they describe sounds utterly improbable. A true story from writer David Sedaris, recorded before a live audience at a reading for City Arts and Lectures in San Francisco.

What happens when you go into a place—in this case a prison—where there are all sorts of codes about what you're never supposed to say...and you say every one of them. Rick Reynolds tells a story from his one-man show (and CD) All Grown Up and No Place to Go, about performing stand-up comedy at a maximum security prison just before Christmas a few years ago.

Last year, a woman named Karen Davis started a national letter writing campaign to try to get This American Life to stop the very program we are broadcasting today—the annual Poultry Slam. In this portion of our show, she explains what it is that we just don't understand about poultry, and why the whole idea of this poultry show was wrong-headed from the start.

David Sedaris reads this story. A high-powered theater critic applies his critical skills to the Christmas pageants at local elementary schools.

Julia Sweeney reads this story. She's a former Saturday Night Live cast member and star of the sad and comic memoir of life with cancer, God Said, "Ha!," which played on Broadway.

A Hollywood TV producer tries to convince a church of evangelical Christians to sell out a member of their own congregation. Matt Malloy reads. He was one of the stars of the acclaimed independent film In the Company of Men.Also in this act: Dickens vs.

Writer David Sedaris's true account of two Christmas seasons he spent working as an elf at Macy's department store in New York.  When a shorter version of this story first aired on NPR's Morning Edition, it generated more tape requests than any story in the show's history to that point.

Tapes recorded in a Chicago home Christmas morning, more than 50 years ago.

Greg Whitehead, with screams from the This American Life audience.

A Christmas tree story by Chicago playwright/musician Beau O'Reilly.

A story about Christmas at Juvenile Court by Chicago novelist/editor Reginald Gibbons.