The Santa Claus affair

Just call her Kristine Kringle. When apparel cataloger Lands' End used two "mystery Santas" as cover models for December catalogs, and launched a Web contest for customers to guess the identities of the secret Santas, few people were on the right track with one. Of the 7,000-plus guesses logged on the Website, only 2% guessed that the more comely Santa was actress Rene Russo, star of the summer hit movie The Thomas Crown Affair. Santa number-two was evidently much easier to ID - 44% of Web voters correctly guessed it was basketball legend Larry Bird.