It can't be fun to have your birthday fall on Christmas, although if you're Jewish—like youthful financier/media mogul Bruce Wasserstein who will be celebrating his 61st birthday tomorrow—we're not sure it matters much. Others who can proudly proclaim they were born the same day as Jesus: Republican sorcerer Karl Rove is turning 58. Helena Christensen will be 40. Annie Lennox is turning 54. Dido is turning 37. Jimmy Buffett will be 62. Literary agent Esther Newberg will be 67. And artist Louise Bourgeois will be celebrating her 97th birthday.

It seems we weren't the only ones to call Monica Noel! When the Times of London dialed her up, she mistakenly thought she was talking to a friend and described her plans to attend a wedding in Mexico. Nice to hear the implosion of her husband's business, class-action lawsuits, and tawdry rumors about her daughters isn't impacting her social calendar! [Business Sheet]

• This will be the bleakest holiday shopping season for retailers in years, but it's not too late to make a bad situation a little bit better. There's still have time to get out there and shop. Do your part and help keep America the consumerist paradise it was designed to be! [AP, WSJ]
• One spot that doesn't appear to be suffering: The Ugg store in Soho. [Racked]
• Kate Moss will appear in an ad campaign for the jewelry brand Fred. [WWD]
• Rock & Republic is planning to launch a new (and cheaper) denim line. [NYM]
• David Chu is parting ways with Tumi. [WWD]
• More job cuts are expected at Liz Claiborne. [WWD]

• A list of spots where you can save on stress and dine out on Christmas. [NYM]
• Tips on how to avoid food poisoning at Grandma's house this year. [NYDN]
• Frank Bruni checks in on Tom Colicchio's Tuesday Dinner and Brian Bistrong's Braeburn in today's Times. [NYT, NYT]
• Is champagne too ostentatious given current events? Try punch. [NYT, NYT]
• Just in case you feel like skipping ahead to New Year's Eve, here's a complete rundown of events planned for the big night. [Citysearch]

It looks like Robert "Bob" Jaffe, the Palm Beach social fixture and Bernard Madoff middleman now under investigation by the FBI, could use a couple of bucks. Palm Beach Post gossip columnist Jose Lambiet reports that Jaffe recently turned up at a consignment shop in town with some of his jackets. "We're selling Mr. Jaffe's things right now," says the store manager. "We've got some nice Kiton jackets and sportcoats that belong to him. New, they're about $5,000. I've got one on sale for $895." From Jaffe's skeleton-filled closet straight to you!

• Katie Couric is still in third place, but her ratings are up considerably. [AP]
• CBS is the only network that has seen viewership rise this season. [Reuters]
• Portfolio's attempt to juice sales with a new cover strategy was a dud. [NYO]
• Ad revenue at the NYT fell 20% last month compared to a year ago. [AP]
• The Times has teamed with Riverhead to publish Obama: The Historic Journey, a book of with photos and essays, in February 2009. [Politico]

Bernie Madoff is facing a long stretch in prison for bilking investors out of $50 billion, and plenty of theories have been batted around as to what might have motivated Madoff to carry out his devious scheme. Was it just about the money? Did he feel any sense of shame as he ripped off hundreds of investors and non-profits? And will there be any sort of redemption for Madoff at the end of the day? To get a little perspective on what it's like to carry out a massive financial fraud, keep the scam going undetected for years, eventually get caught, and then account for the wrongdoing, we turned to someone who's been through all that (and more): Sam Antar, who, along with his cousin Eddie Antar, built Crazy Eddie into a electronics powerhouse in the '70s and '80s until the company came crashing down and the Antars were indicted on a variety of charges.

It's the holidays and the end of a horrible year, so that can only mean one thing: Everyone is consuming their body weight in alcohol! As if you needed any enticement, bars are reviving whiskey and cognac-heavy cocktails from Prohibition and the Great Depression like the Sidecar, the Old Fashioned, and the Manhattan, while Stolichnaya is going for gallows humor by promoting new drinks called Rejected Resume, Battered Bull and Welfare Punch.

Stephanie Seymour playing with her daughter on the beach in St. Barts ... Woody Allen and Soon-Yi Previn leaving the Ritz in Paris ... Hilary Swank standing outside a ski lodge in Aspen ... Mariah Carey and Nick Cannon walking around Aspen in ski gear ... Naomi Watts and Liev Schreiber packing up their SUV with son Alexander and baby Samuel ... Alicia Keys laying by the pool in Australia ... and Gwyneth Paltrow going out for the night with Stella McCartney and Madonna in London.

We can't be certain it's the real Olivia Palermo who set up a YouTube account recently under the name "OliviaPalermo." But we're also not sure there's anyone else who would have gone to the trouble of creating a "highlight reel" of the young socialite's appearances on The City (which doesn't even debut until December 29th), along with pics of her posing for photographers and showing off the pretty dresses she's worn to various events over the past year—all set to the tune of Lady GaGa's "Beautiful Dirty Rich." The more likely scenario: Palermo's just getting ready to capitalize on the media attention that will inevitably follow when the show debuts on MTV next week. The video was uploaded yesterday and it's Palermo's first production, but we're looking forward to many more self-promotional vids in the coming weeks. Maybe it'll even land her top billing on a show of her own in the near future! The video is after the jump.

There will be no Christmas miracle for Project Runway fans who have been hoping that season six, which has been in reality TV limbo due to an unseemly tussle between The Weinstein Company, NBC Universal, and Lifetime, will soon grace our screens. Yesterday a judge rejected as "untimely" Lifetime's attempt to move the fight from New York state court to federal court, a small victory for NBC, which is claiming producer Harvey Weinstein had no right to sell the show to Lifetime. If only the judge had exercised the power and wisdom of King Solomon, we'd know who truly deserved to own this particular multi-headed, campy, and colorful baby. [Variety]

We didn't have much success last week getting one of our operatives past Bernie Madoff's doorman, and we really didn't have any interest in trekking to Greenwich to pay a visit to our second favorite villain in the saga, Walter Noel. But could we at least get Walter or his wife Monica on the phone? Ask and ye shall receive. After calling half a dozen numbers and getting nowhere at Walter's office (voicemail), his house in Greenwich (the maid picked up), the Noel home in Southampton (was it one of his infamous daughters who picked up?), and the Noel's apartment on Park Avenue, we finally got a hold of Mrs. Noel herself. You can view the video above to see how it went down. But we're guessing you're going to come to the same conclusion we did: Monica does not sound like a very happy woman these days.

• Bruce Lisman, the former co-head of global equities at Bear Stearns, has cut the price of his apartment at 923 Fifth Ave. The four-bedroom is now $16.75 million, down from the $22.5 million he was seeking when he first put the home on the market in November of last year. [Cityfile, BHS]
• Colombian ambassador to the U.N. Claudia Blum and her husband Francisco Barberi have paid $3.9 million for a third-floor co-op at 936 Fifth Avenue, which happens to be right next door to the other apartment they bought in the building for $3.35 million earlier this month. [NYO]
• Michael Mancuso, the recently-appointed CFO of SPX, paid $2.5 million for a three-bedroom apartment at 137 Reade Street. [Cityfile]

Annette de la Renta, the gala staple and wife of Oscar de la Renta, turns 69 today. Designer Kate Spade is 46. Hedge funder Jim Chanos is turning 51. Former banker and Observer owner Arthur Carter is 77. Per Se's Jonathan Benno is turning 39. Heiress Marylou Whitney is turning 83. Ryan Seacrest is 34. Author Mary Higgins Clark is turning 81. Actor Mekhi Phifer is 34. And singer (and new dad) Ricky Martin is celebrating his 37th birthday today.

• Was the "exhaustion" that sent Samantha Ronson to the hospital the result of a marathon screaming match with Lindsay? [TMZ]
• Walter Noel's five daughters are a bunch of maneaters who used to steal other girls' boyfriends, at least according to one of their former Georgetown classmates. [P6]
• Now that he's dated half the blondes in New York, Lance Armstrong says he's having a baby with his girlfriend, Anna Hansen. [NYDN, PM]
• Star Jones has supposedly gained 30 lbs. recently and is now worried her boyfriend, chef Herb Wilson, is going to dump her because of it. [NE]

• The number of workers filing new claims for jobless benefits jumped by 30,000 to a 26-year peak last week. [Reuters]
• AmEx and CIT will get $5.72 billion in bailout money. [Reuters]
• Doubts about Bernie Madoff now appear to date back several decades. [WSJ]
• Liliane Bettencourt, the world's wealthiest woman, is believed to have invested in Bernie Madoff via Thierry Magon de La Villehuchet, the money manager who committed suicide at his office yesterday. [Bloomberg, NYT]
• Steve Feinberg's Cerberus, which has suffered several losing months, is now limiting investor redemptions. [Bloomberg]
• Execs at Old Lane, the hedge fund operated by Vikram Pandit before it was acquired by Citigroup, may be leaving the bank to start a new company. [WSJ]
• Hedge funder Larry Robbins is cutting compensation and staff. [NYP]

Just in case one list wasn't enough, we present to you a second roundup of what a bunch of celebrities (Robert De Niro, Amy Winehouse), socials (Julia Restoin Roitfeld, Amanda Hearst), art moguls (Larry Gagosian, Aby Rosen), and the occasional billionaire (Jonathan Tisch), and publicist (Nadine Johnson) have planned for the holidays. The full list—which is based on various press accounts, TV interviews, and the excellent research of blogs like Park Avenue Peerage—is after the jump.

• Whitney Port explains why she named her new clothing line "Whitney Eve" (it's complicated), and explains why it is that the world really needs another celebrity clothing line. [Nylon]
• The year's best and worst windows, fashion PR stunts, pop-up shops and more. [Racked]
• More on the messy meltdown at Kira Plastinina. [Shophound]
• The recession may be putting a damper on plastic surgery, but injectables like Botox remain as popular as ever. [WSJ]
• It's well worth braving the cold weather and crowds: Panicked retailers "are practically giving the goods away with last-minute sales in a desperate bid to save the so-far-disastrous season from catastrophe." [NYP]

Edgar Bronfman Jr. has had a lousy few years—would you want to be running a music company these days?—but at least he can rest easier knowing that ex-Simon & Schuster CEO Dick Snyder won't be a thorn in his side any longer. A court today dismissed Snyder's $100 million lawsuit against Bronfman for helping to "conceive" of the plan to buy Warner for $2.6 billion in 2003. [Reuters]

Here's an interesting idea courtesy of author Michael Gross: If you're doing a little year-end cleaning around the house and you have a few pairs of shoes you were planning to give to charity or toss in the trash, why not wrap up a single shoe in a pretty package with a bow and send it to the President Bush? The only thing better than seeing George Bush duck a flying shoe would be the sight of 50,000 of them piled up on the White House lawn. [MGross.com]