The Slice: Where is that bill-paying time machine?

The other day, I received a bill with a payment-due date of Dec. 7.

The postmark indicated it had been mailed Dec. 10.

That’s cutting it close, wouldn’t you say?

Misheard lyric: “Silent Night” has been massacred countless times over the years. But when he was 4, Jo Russell’s son put a special spin on the song. He turned one famous line into “Round up yon virgins.”

That would be quite a roundup.

Celebrating a holiday on a different day: It turns out quite a few people have done that. For some, it’s an annual tradition that accommodates family schedules and commitments.

Jan Hunt Knapp, Mary Ann Trautman, Marie Jurgensen, Karen Meye, Kim Bush, Mike Pounds, Pam Jones, Mike Storms and Jeanne Perry were among those who shared stories.

“Any time the people I love most are able to be with me it becomes a holiday, no matter what the date on the calendar shows,” wrote Marge Huntington.

“All else is just a big baked bird with a posterior stuffed with bread crumbs, or a dead tree shedding needles on the carpet.”

Monday afternoon in Spokane: A neatly dressed woman with black hair was seated ahead of me on the bus. Her phone rang. The ring tones consisted of the musical opening of James Brown’s “Sex Machine.”

She held the phone to her ear. And after a moment, she began speaking in Russian.

Slice answers: There are two schools of thought about friendship bread (which is made with a starter and must be kept going).

Several readers spoke of having possession of a starter batch several years old. They sang the praises of the bread produced from same.

But another reader wrote, “The best thing to do with friendship bread is to humanely euthanize it.”

Two-fer: Bev Hatch takes a dim view of airline passengers who recline their seat backs into someone else’s already limited space.

And Gary Polser suggested that the local person who’s as polarizing as the Confederate flag is one of my S-R colleagues.

Today’s Slice question: Is going to the movies this area’s No. 1 Christmas Day tradition for Jews?