He's hanging right there in our entry hall—a novel Christmas ornament made of cloth, with nylon whiskers, button eyes and a bright red, plastic nose. And he has a motion sensor powered by two AA batteries inside him to activate his recorded greeting.

He's really just a decoration, but Mom knows better. She's convinced that somehow Dad has returned for the holidays through this cantankerous ol' Santa Claus wall hanging, because he just can't stand the fact that we're all having Christmas without him.

Dad was never much for the Christmas spirit. He sat stoically in his easy chair while the rest of us made festive fools of ourselves every year. He kept Christmas in his own way. He wasn't exactly Ebeneezer Scrooge, but he was sure no Fezziwig. And he did enjoy watching how much we all enjoyed the holiday experience.

We lost Dad a couple of months before Christmas of 1990. Needless to say, the holidays were not particularly happy that year.

But Mom tried her best. She shopped for gifts and decorated the house. And that was the year she found these Santa Claus heads. She liked them so much that she bought one for herself and one for each of her kids.

But this was no ordinary Santa head—he would talk to anyone who passed by. "Ho, ho, ho ... Merry Christmas!" Santa would say. And the greeting would be followed by a rather snappy rendition of "Jingle Bells." It was really pretty neat. Until, that is, it developed a mind of its own.

No, I haven't watched one too many episodes of The X Files . And I haven't been nipping a little of Aunt Debbie's eggnog. But, yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus ... and he's starting to go a little wacko hanging around on the wall of our entryway.

It all started with the one at Mom's house. He would bellow out a hearty "Ho, ho, ho" when no one was around. But when she'd walk past him? Silence.

"I know it's your father coming back to put in his two cents' worth every Christmas," she'd say. "You know how bullheaded he could be around the holidays."

"Watch," she'd say, and the next thing we'd know she was almost doing calisthenics in front of this Santa hanging on the wall. Nothing.

"See what I mean?" she'd say. "When you want him to talk, he won't ... just like Dad."

Later in the evening, sometime during our holiday meal, suddenly we'd hear a "Ho, ho, ho" coming from the other side of the room. Mom would just smile.

I didn't really buy the story until it happened to us last Christmas. We woke up to his little number in the middle of the night. And if you don't think that's a little unnerving, well then you've never watched Rod Serling's Twilight Zone .

"Are you awake?" asked my wife, at the same time jabbing me in the ribs just in case I wasn't.

"Huh? What? Am I what?" I stammered sleepily.

"Did you hear that?" she asked.

"Hear what?"

"Downstairs ... the 'Ho, ho, ho' ... someone's down there moving past the Santa head!" she said with a sense of urgency in her voice.

"Yeah, it's just Santa Claus," I explained. "Now go back to sleep."

"Well, first of all, it's not Christmas, so I'm pretty sure that it's not Santa Claus," she said in a surprisingly calm voice. "And secondly ... GET YOUR BUTT OUT OF BED AND SEE WHAT IT IS."

I shot up like a dog with its tail on fire. Even I couldn't sleep through that.

I went downstairs to investigate, comforted by the knowledge that I had the element of surprise on my side, that I had learned enough martial arts by watching almost every episode of the Kung Fu TV series in the late '60s and that no prowler in his right mind would still be within three miles of our house after hearing my wife's screeching!

After turning on every light along the way to the entryway, I discovered the culprit.

"It was just the dog," I explained when I returned to bed. The news was not exactly comforting to my wife, who was wide awake and sitting up in bed when I snuggled back under the blankets.

"I can't just go back to sleep," she snapped. "Now I'm wide awake."

"We're taking the batteries out of that thing tomorrow," she went on. Then she said something else, but I'm not exactly sure what it was because I had drifted back to sleep.

After all, I wasn't worried. We knew who it was, right, Mom?