Yesterday, ABC aired a Christmas special called "Holiday With The Stars"- interviewing random celebrities about the holidays and their holiday traditions. Amazingly, they somehow managed to turn a holiday special into an excuse for them to gossip about Tom Brady & Giselle, Britney and crazy Paula Abdul (no, seriously).

However, the special did have a couple of fun parts- namely, when athletes took the cameras inside their homes to show how they decorated for Christmas. And lucky for us Red Sox fans, they went inside the home of Curt and Shonda Schilling. "We are a family of excess on the holidays", says Curt - but you can tell that doesn't extend to his diet and fitness regime this year, because already he looks like he's lost a ton of weight. Bravo, Curt!

We learn that the Schillings have more trees than people in their house (Curt says there are 19, but Shonda says it's more like 10... you know, just 10!). And each tree has a different theme - the fancy big tree in the main room, the family tree with pictures of the kids, little trees in each of the kids' rooms -- and best of all, a baseball tree. A BASEBALL TREE. This is genius, and I am ashamed I don't have a baseball tree in my house. The baseball tree also gives us the funniest exchange during the segment (which is saying something- because Curt is very sarcastically funny throughout):

Shonda: This is actually my favorite... how many people have the Curt Schilling Philadelphia Phillies ornament?

Curt: One - I'm gonna guess. One person has it... and it's us.

I'm also proud to see that even on a Christmas show, he gets in a dig at the Yankees, and works in a mention of the Sox' two World Championships. Well done, sir!

Here's full video of the segment- a little Christmas gift for a Monday morning:

As is obvious from my posting schedule (or non-posting schedule is more like), this has been one crazy week. Fortunately, I'm boarding a plane back to Texas for the holidays this evening, and things should actually be quieter there... so my normal posting schedule will resume.

In the meantime, I'm going to leave you with three holiday cards I received.

First up, from the Chicago Cubs- I got this cute little card:

Second is the cutest e-card ever from Jennifer -- and, yes, that is Papelbon, Romo, Favre and Beckett dancing around in elf costumes. To get the full effect, you need to go here:

And possibly the best card ever created, by J-Money for Ladies... -- there are 8 of us, and she put one guy on the card for every Lady. Care to guess which one is mine?

Also- you can see the full size version here, and J-Money's post at Ladies... from yesterday here.

Hideki Okajima: Wanted to remind Josh, Jonathan & Clay that he kicks ass as well- and swooped in to rightfully claim his place as TYIB's Setup Man of the Year. And if Josh and Jonathan's wins could be considered "convincing", Oki's was OVERWHELMING- he snagged 45% of the public vote, and the next closest vote-getter (Joba Chamberlain- vomit) got only 16% of the vote. Carlos Marmol got third, which is a travesty, because that relegated Rafael Betancourt (who should have gotten 2nd place) back to fourth.

Jonathan Papelbon: If anyone's wondered why I haven't posted the "Jonathan's dog ate the ball" story - it's because my faithful readers will know I already posted that story almost 3 weeks ago, way back on December 3rd. We all know his dog didn't eat the ball, but if this is the fake story that the press and (most of) the public buy to get them off his back about the WS ball? I'm in favor. He's pretty clever, that one.

Curt Schilling: Shockingly, Curt has an opinion on the Mitchell Report and the resulting steroids hysteria. And then wants to clarify what he said. I admit, I am always fascinated to read what Curt writes- it's so very rare that an athlete writes a blog, much less actually writes the posts on the blog. I have a hard time believing that most athletes sit down and write the PR-sounding drivel that appears on their official websites and/or blogs (Pat Neshek and Gilbert Arenas are two others that actually write their own stuff) - but every word on Curt's blog is his own. And whether you agree with his viewpoints or not, I'm glad he's not afraid to share them.

And closing out my little roundup of sorts, here's a little Christmas card I got from the Sox:

Josh Beckett took Starter of the Year.
Jonathan Papelbon took Closer of the Year.
Clay Buchholz took Performance of the Year.
Hideki Okajima took SetUp Man of the Year.
Even Manny Ramirez's camera-damaging blast took Blooper of the Year.

Now, on the final day of the This Year In Baseball Awards, the Sox are closing out what they started on the first day of the Awards -- J.D. Drew's grand slam in Game 6 of the ALCS won the Postseason Moment of the Year.

In fact, four different Sox moments took all four top spots - JD's slam at 20.2% narrowly beat out Jonathan Papelbon final out of Game 4 of the World Series (19.5%), Papelbon's pickoff of Matt Holliday in Game 2 of the World Series (13%) and Manny Ramirez's walkoff homerun in Game 2 of the ALDS (which got my vote-- that was unreal).