So now that it's over, what are we going to do with them? I refer to the Christmas cards -- those colorful missives from near and far -- that have filled our mailboxes for the past two weeks, crowded together on the mantel, coffee tables and end tables, atop the TV, along the bookshelves, upstairs, downstairs and in my lady's chamber. Toss 'em? Not at our house you don't. That Great Protector of All Things Sentimental sees to that, year after year.

She was right. It was the prettiest tree she has ever had. It stood there in the corner of her living room, almost regal, a shimmering Eiffel Tower of holiday splendor. "And it takes up so much less room. With 29 people here on Christmas Eve in this small house, that's important," said my only surviving sister, whom I visited in the sleet-sheeted foothills last weekend. "All I had to do was plug it in. It even came with the lights on it."

A previous reference to "yellow dog Democrat," prompted reader R.C. Horncastle of Raleigh to ask for the origin of the term. "I've asked several natives, including two politically astute Chapel Hill grads, and none had any idea," he said. A call to U.S. Rep. Bob Etheridge's office brought quick results.

As I drove past Crabtree Valley Mall on Glenwood Avenue on Thanksgiving afternoon, with not a car in sight, I thought, "Well, this is what they must mean by a 'pregnant pause.' " The silence was eerie, as if the whole world were watching football or napping after the Thanksgiving feast. Even the sky's almost rosy hue reminded me of the November day that a tornado hit Raleigh, blowing away the Kmart and chunks of northwest Raleigh.

We had met our friends the Ambrose Dudleys for breakfast and while waiting for our order we were discussing the previous night's TV recollections of the day President John F. Kennedy was killed. I soon discerned that, in our enthusiasm and keen competition for talk time, we were invading the sound space of a man sitting alone at a nearby table. I was neither surprised nor offended when he abruptly injected himself into our conversation.

It was a Sunday morning. I don't know how the subject came up. But my niece (my age) visiting for the weekend asked if my wife and I thought people in heaven recognized each other. "I never really thought about it," my wife replied.

With faint hope in their hearts, Saturday after Saturday, they suit up and go out bravely to meet the foe. They are the losers, the lads who wear the Duke and Carolina blues this year. And don't tell them that it matters not who won or lost but how they played the game. Balderdash! So that's why a few hard-core Carolina fans like me have come out of the closet and pulled for Duke this year, a blasphemy that would get me kicked out of the Rams Club, if I were a member.

So Duke, Carolina and other universities are launching efforts to revitalize the honor code, requiring student test-takers to sign a pledge that they have neither cheated nor seen anyone else cheating.

A farewell ode to an athlete dying old. Chapel Hill. September 1948. The University of Texas was in town. Men in cowboy boots and expensive wide-brimmed stetsons had strutted Franklin Street for two days, betting outrageous sums on the high-flying Longhorns, who had clobbered Carolina the previous September in Austin. Truly the eyes of Texas were upon them. By Saturday night the strut was gone. The high-rollers were wiring home for money. Several hung around Chapel Hill for days afterwards -- they had bet the ranch.

On Tuesday, the chancellor was coming to lunch, and Tuesday is garbage collection day. So unlike Shakespeare's dilemma over whether "to be or not to be," ours was whether to put the garbage out by the curb or leave the monstrous plastic container on the back patio.

In response to a column item describing my guilt over killing a copperhead snake in my neighbor's yard, a reader wrote, "I wonder how you can write so movingly about your feeling of guilt over the execution of a snake but never speak out against the state's execution of a human being." In view of four executions in the past seven weeks, the query is timely. But I have no easy answer. To be quite honest, I'm still struggling with this issue.