For one thing, you'll find that Santa's gone electronic. Never mind the carefully-scrawled pieces of paper that carried the traditional requests in years past; the clued-up children these days can send Santa e-mail (to several different places; of course, they must all go to the right chap eventually -- mustn't they?). He has pages on the Web, too; through north.pole.org you can send in your requests to Santa, Rudolph or the Elves and get an instant reply.
Finding out about Christmas traditions is easy, too. There are many places where you can find out where the traditional trappings of Christmas came from (why do we give gifts? what does the tree mean? why is Christmas in December?) and more pages where other winter celebrations are detailed.
If you want to know how to look after that Christmas tree that's dropping needles all over the carpet, the National Christmas Tree Association (in America) can help. And if, like me, you managed to miss the last posting date for overseas cards, help is at hand; the Electric Postcard Rack at MIT lets you send electronic postcards to your friends with Web access. Quicker, cheaper and made with 100% recycled electrons!
The traditional Christmas dinner ingredients can be found scattered around the Web. Honeysuckle White Turkeys will tell you more than you ever wanted to know about turkeys in general and their turkeys in particular. There are recipes for traditional plum pudding and for ice-cream Christmas pudding (more sensible in the Southern Hemisphere). The Vegetarian Society's Christmas recipes are also available.
Santa on the Web: http://north.pole.org/
Christmas traditions: http://cyberspace.com/santa/general.html
Other winter traditions: http://www.maui.net/~mcculc/xmas.htm
National Christmas Tree Association: http://www.execpc.com/~ncta/
Electric Postcards: http://postcards.www.media.mit.edu/Postcards/
Turkey: http://www.magibox.net/~hsw/abunturk.html [Site now defunct.]
Plum pudding: http://www.irish.com/irish/food.html
Ice-cream pudding: ftp://gatekeeper.dec.com/pub/recipes/xmas-icecream
Vegetarian recipes: http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Vegetarian/Orgs/VegSocUK/Recipes/eatings.html [This particular link no longer works, but try http://www.veg.org/veg/ instead.]
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