ODDS & ENDS.

Merry Christmas to our new national team, the president and vice president-elect, to the new senator from New York, and all other officials elected on November 7. May all of you be Easter to your constituencies, the nation, and the world.

To all cell phone users, merry Christmas. You have increased and multiplied and filled the earth. May you stay on the road while dialing and driving. Is your talk really cheap? And don't forget to turn your cell phone off in church.

Merry Christmas and thanks to priests, deacons, and laypeople who preached great homilies. To parishioners who endured dull sermons, merry Christmas. Better luck next year.

To all who believed in the gloom and doom predictions about Y2K, merry Christmas. Have you finished off the bottled water and canned food yet?

Merry Christmas to everyone sending and receiving e-mail, and to the Grinch who's trying to steal Napster from the Internet.

To all the scientists who contributed to the Genome Project, merry Christmas. May your work be used wisely for all humanity. May it universalize health care and cost.

Merry Christmas to the cardinals of the United States: Bevilacqua, George, Hickey, Keeler, Law, Mahony, Maida, and to the St. Louis Cardinals who quested for a pennant.

To Ralph Nader and Patrick Buchanan, bookends of the political spectrum, merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas to Harry Potter, who gives the gift of enjoyable reading to children of all ages, and to teachers of reading everywhere. Your gift of reading is better than gold, frankincense, or myrrh.

To Prince William, who might defend the faith some day, merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas to all our Christian sister and brother religions; and to our non-Christian brother and sister religions, happy holidays. And please don't forget that we people in the pews think the world of you.

To Elian Gonzalez, and all who go back and forth to Cuba, merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas to all the people who tried to become millionaires who survived, and the survivor who became a millionaire. May our TV fare improve this next year.

To Sister Helen Prejean--author of the book Dead Man Walking, which triggered first a movie and now an opera, but, most importantly, a new national consciousness about the death penalty--to Governor George Ryan of Illinois who suspended the death penalty this past year, to others who followed suit, and to all people on death rows everywhere, merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas and thanks to all who gave a chunk of change to worthy causes during these continuing years of plenty. To the tightfisted too, merry Christmas. What on earth are you waiting for? Share this heavenly economic time.

To all who made pilgrimages during this Jubilee millennium year, and as we all continue on the pilgrimage, merry Christmas.

PETER GILMOUR ([e-mail]) teaches at the Institute of Pastoral Studies of Loyola University Chicago.