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His successor at Mount Rose has not been named.The Links of London Sale . Andrew D. Phillips retirement activitiesBanquet, noon Saturday, assembly hall of the Tulsa Convention Center downtown, with guest speaker Dale "Apollo" Cook. For ticket information, call Lola Harris, 282-4924.Appreciation service, 11 a.m. Sunday at Mount Rose Baptist Church, 1137 N. Cincinnati Ave., with guest speaker the Rev. T.J. Roberts.Homecoming celebration with former members, clergy and family, 3:30 p.m. Dec. 19 at Mount Rose; guest speaker the Rev. Willard Jones.Exodus sermon by the Rev. Andrew Phillips, 11 a.m. Sunday, Dec. 26, Mount Rose.The lady of this house says that the lanterns are from Ikea, thus dispelling any notion that they may have been the handiwork of Santa's elves. The photographer's uncommonly and unfestively querulous, as if auditioning for the part of Grumpy.The Salvation Army band leads them off - by the left, Good King Wenceslas - up past the half-price sales, past the buskers in Santa hats, past. . . Links of London Bangles, there's a little lad who doesn't get past Burger King at all.[Nicholas], it's said, left a gold coin overnight in each of the children's shoes. The money was taken to their father. The debt was paid.Lanterns at the ready, children in Durham celebrate their patron saint St Nicholas's dayDURHAM'S wick, like Big Meeting Day. The Market Place has set out its stalls, Silver Street shimmers, Sherburn Hill Salvation Army band plays See Amid the Winter Snow, as very well it might. The Bleak Mid Winter might have been appropriate, too.There's a lady dressed as a plum pudding, a gentleman as a turkey (or, possibly, a partridge in a pear tree).There are, come to think, several other ladies who look like Christmas puddings but only one who may mean to.Amid the winter snow, too, are a couple of guys whose high-vis jackets identify them as members of the Teesdale Search and Rescue team.This seems a little over the top until almost stumbling upon the mountains of snow fallen from the high roofs of the Prince Bishops shopping centre onto themall below. Goodness knows how many may be flattened beneath that lot.It's Saturday afternoon, coming in Links of London Mobile Charm, hundreds of lantern-bearing children forming up behind a crush barrier for a St Nicholas parade to the great cathedral.The barrier is guarded by two very large gentlemen from Durham County Council's Department of Bouncing and Ancillary Activities.The lady of this house says that the lanterns are from Ikea, thus dispelling any notion that they may have been the handiwork of Santa's elves. The photographer's uncommonly and unfestively querulous, as if auditioning for the part of Grumpy."So you wantme to go to the cathedral as well, " he says, with the air of a man anxious to be home for the football results and with all the italicised emphasis on the sentence's final two words.Too true. That's where St Nicholas is going to be.EVERYONE knows, probably, that St Nicholas begat Santa Claus. Fewer may be aware that he was a thaumaturge, but he must have been because it says as much in the Oxford Dictionary of Saints.That it translates as "wonder worker" helps explain it. He certainly spread wide his largesse.A fourth century bishop of Myra, in Turkey, Nicholas is the patron saint of prisoners and of Links of London N Charm, of pawnbrokers and of apothecaries, of sailors, unmarried girls and, of course, children.He is also said to have raised to life three bairnsmurdered in a brine tub by a butcher.