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"Dear Santa Claus," the letter begins. "I'm writing you this letter because I won't be able to see you because of Covid-19. This year I learned a lot about the meaning of family. This year I lost my baby cousin." The letter, written by an 8-year-old girl from Tucson, is one of thousands addressed to Kris Kringle that arrive at the post office in Santa Claus, Indiana. (Hays, 12/22)

“Dear Santa,” began a letter written by Alani, age 9, addressed to 123 Elf Road, North Pole, 88888. “This year has been rough because of crona,” she wrote. “I was hoping I could get some Lego sets because my mom said she can’t get anything for me for Christmas because she is not getting paid as much.” Alani’s letter was one of more than 23,000 letters sent to Santa Claus this year through a 108-year-old United States Postal Service program. (Gross, 12/17)

Almost no place has been spared — and no one. The virus that first emerged a year ago in Wuhan, China, swept across the world in 2020, leaving havoc in its wake. More than any event in memory, the pandemic has been a global event. On every continent, households have felt its devastation — joblessness and lockdowns, infirmity and death. And an abiding, relentless fear. But each nation has its own story of how it coped. (12/16)

If the normal year presents the challenge of deciding between “Joy to the World” and the Hallelujah chorus, this season the question is how to celebrate the birth of Christ without creating a potential superspreader event. (Bahr, 12/20)

Hollywood is turning this season into a very covid Christmas. But the content’s radical timeliness also raises questions: Are Americans ready for stories about a virus that has taken the lives of more than 300,000 Americans, kept many of us at home and created economic havoc for millions? Should Hollywood be moving so quickly to capitalize on the tragedy in the first place? (Zeitchik, 12/18)

We can now glimpse, with the advent of vaccines, that there will be an end to this pandemic. But to get there, we have to somehow keep going through months of trauma and strain. How do we do that? How do we endure more and more of the isolation, the deaths, the flare-ups, the economic wreckage, the fear and the uncertainty? There are ways—not perfect solutions but methods that can help. (Moyer, 12/21)

More than a million people in the U.S. are estimated to be facing their first holiday season without a loved one who has died from COVID-19. (Isaacs-Thomas, 12/23)

On Sunday morning, Alex Leyton, 50, awoke in her San Francisco home, scrolled through some news on her phone and landed on a short video clip of trucks loaded with the coronavirus vaccine leaving a Pfizer facility in Michigan. “I started bawling,” she says. “You know how they say ‘ugly crying’? I physically could not stop.” She’d kept it together for nine months. Now, “all that I’ve been holding in and trying to control just flooded out.” (Judkis, 12/15)

On a Saturday afternoon in March as COVID-19 was bearing down on New York City, a dozen scientists anxiously crowded around a computer in a suburban drug company’s lab. They had spent weeks frantically getting blood from early survivors across the globe and from mice with human-like immune systems — all to test thousands of potential treatments. Now it was time for results. (Marchione, 12/21)

A global pandemic. A racial reckoning. A presidential impeachment. A monumental election. We all know 2020 was a year like no other. But is it possible to sum it up in one word or phrase? The Washington Post asked readers to do just that. (Goren, Kulkarni and Vongkiatkajorn, 12/18)

In the vernacular of epidemiologists, the words “efficacy” and “effectiveness” are used quite often. Generally, the lay public doesn’t understand the nuanced difference, but the difference is quite important. (Barbiero, 12/18)

Humanity faces an unknown number of new and potentially fatal viruses emerging from Africa's tropical rainforests, according to Professor Jean-Jacques Muyembe Tamfum, who helped discover the Ebola virus in 1976 and has been on the frontline of the hunt for new pathogens ever since.(Kiley, 12/22)

A multi-part series from Scientific American: Kidney disease affects millions of Americans, but corporate capture of dialysis, along with disparities in treatment and transplant access, mean that not everyone's journey is the same. (12/14, 12/15, 12/16, 12/17, 12/18)

On Oct. 28, 1956, backstage at “The Ed Sullivan Show,” the 21-year-old Elvis Presley—the smooth-faced, pouting, swivel-hipped hero of American youth—extended his left arm. In went the needle. Off went the flashbulbs. A polio star was born. And then he went on stage to wiggle, wink and wail. “Hound Dog.” “Love Me Tender.” “Don’t Be Cruel.” (Kenen, 12/18)

Ed Attanasio never trained as an artist. In fact, he had worked as a journalist, ad copywriter and stand-up comedian until suffering a “mini-stroke” in 2009 at age 50. Due to the stroke, he lost his ability to retrieve words. Everything changed for him when he got busted for doodling during a speech therapy session. Luckily, his therapist was impressed and suggested he continue creating art every day to engage his brain. In his new life as an artist, Attanasio frequently donates artwork to charity auctions to raise money for pet rescue groups. (Reeder, 12/11)

In the grand pantheon of salad dressings, French dressing can be easily forgotten — a sticky, sweet, carrot-colored blend overshadowed by America’s undisputed heavyweight champion of dressings, ranch. But the federal government has shown great interest in the humble dressing, painstakingly regulating since 1950 the ingredients that it must contain and revising the rules at least five times since then. Now, the government wants to get out of the French dressing business. (Levenson, 12/20)