Back in Kentucky, where some of my relatives live, they have an interesting tradition. It starts innocently enough, on Christmas eve, with a party complete with eggnog. They have their own recipe for eggnog, in which they usually leave out the egg and the nog (what is nog, anyway), and substitute the rum with whiskey. After sharing much Christmas cheer and "eggnog," they go out to a grove of evergreen trees and wait for Santa. They fix up a decoy tree, decorated as pretty as you please. One year they wanted to get some of the kids to dress up as elves, to heighten decoy affect, but the mothers would not hear of it. There they wait in their Santa Blind, with their shotguns, waiting for Santa to fly over. When they hear sleigh bells overhead, they all open fire, hopping to bag the big guy. They call this annual tradition the Santa Shoot.
We are really not sure how this tradition got started, but we think it started during WWII, when citizens were asked to be airplane spotters. Back then, if you saw a plane overhead, you were encouraged to look at it through binoculars, and report if it was a German plane. I guess my relatives decided that since Santa was not an American, he had no business flying over our territory. I also guess that some of them figured that while it was good to keep an eye out for invading aircraft, it would be even better to shoot it down.
There is another story about how this tradition got started. It seems that Santa chews snuff, and naturally has to spit out the tobacco juice. Well, one year, one of my uncles caught some spittle in the eye, and has vowed revenge. And in my family, if you harm one, you harm them all. I guess it is just family loyalty gone horribly wrong.