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Perhaps the most delicious thing about the first days of a new year is the sense of wonder and discovery that accompanies every "first" presented to our reborn self. Imagine, if you will, our childlike, wide-eyed reaction (not totally dissimilar to a four-year-old learning the effects of biting a hot burner on the stovetop) to the first Tom Cruise/Katie Holmes relationship news of 2006, which took a pokey five days to reach the world. According to Life & Style, Cruise and Holmes may (always a pretty big "may") have put their marriage plans on hold after a botched make-good session with Katie's family over the holidays:

“Tom and Katie ended up leaving — three days earlier than planned,” according to a “close friend” of Cruise. “Katie was in tears, but that’s standard when it comes to dealing with family matters and Tom.”


A spokesman for Cruise denies the story, but there have been previous reports that Holmes’ lawyer father is not thrilled with the prospects of the two getting hitched.

“My honest opinion is that the wedding’s not going to happen,” a “friend of the couple” told the mag. “Neither one of them seems as enthusiastic as they once did about marriage.”

Cruise's typically bullheaded insistence that a six foot-tall e-meter draped in tinsel and blinking lights is a perfectly acceptable alternative to a dangerous street tree was an obvious act of relationship sabotage, ensuring that there would be no Christmas harmony in the more traditional Holmes residence. And as for this obviously very connected friend's assertion about the duo's flagging passion for matrimony, well, like any other red-blooded, heterosexual male, Cruise knows that there's no need to buy the cow when one can mysteriously inseminate the chosen baby-vessel for free.