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If weight loss is one of your goals this year, check out these weight loss success stories for inspiration. Each person profiled in this photo gallery lost a 100 pounds or more! Our fitness expert breaks down the FRESH Start Diet Resolutions to help get you started.

What are your resolutions for the new year? How well did you do on last year’s goals?

Buy Ugly Sweaters

Atlanta Bargain Hunter has posted tips from an expert on how to make gift returns a smooth process. It covers everything from what you need to return an item to restocking fees and online returns. We hope you find the information useful as you get ready to head to the mall and return those well-intentioned but undesirable gifts.

Do you have any advice on gift returning? What’s the worst gift you received this holiday season?

Laretta Houston

There are only two shopping days left before Christmas, and perhaps you’re scrambling to find last-minute gifts for a friend, coworker or relative. Maybe you just need a hostess gift for that party or dinner you’re headed to this weekend. Here are a few things that you could pick up in a pinch and still look like you’d had it planned out all along:

SoRen Tea – Earlier this year, sister Sonnia Shields and Rena Williams launched SoRen Tea, LLC, a gourmet blend of loose teas. SoRen’s Tea’s signature collection features eight blends (including Cashmere Crème, Coco Chic, Vanilla Rouge, Citrine Blossom) that come packaged in sleek black tins. The teas are available at Spa Sydell at the Forum at Peachtree Parkway in Norcross, and Eleven Market at the Loews Hotel in Midtown. (Retails for $16.95 to $21.95) The classic holiday tote, which features Vintage Black, Bohemian Peach and Posh Noir blends retails for $54.50.

See's Candies

Chocolate Truffles by See’s Candies – The West Coast candy maker opened two See’s Candies gift centers this year in the Atlanta area for the holidays – Town Center at Cobb in Kennesaw  and the Mall of Georgia in Buford. The truffles, which come in a pretty gold box, have flavored centers such as dark chocolate chip, café au lait, hazelnut, key lime, rasberry and lemon. (Retails for $10.05 for 8 ounces, $20.10 for 16 ounces. Other favorites include the Winter Wonderland

Starbucks Gift Card – It would be hard to disappoint any coffee drinker with one of Starbucks special holiday gift cards or any of their seasonal products. And yes, the spicy, cedar flavored Christmas Blend is back this year. The Holiday Cold Cup ($9.95 to 12.95) or the Let’s Merry Tumbler ($10.95) make excellent stocking stuffers and office gifts – not to mention the Falala ceramic tumbler ($10.95) that was designed by a store employee.

Even many churches are taking a holiday on Christmas, including North Metro Church in Marietta. That doesn't mean there's nothing to do on Christmas Day, though. We have a few suggestions. Photo: Bob Andres, bandres@ajc.com

There aren’t many options if you’re planning to get out of the house on Christmas Day. Even many churches have closed up shop to allow church employees and volunteers to spend the day with family, as the AJC reported earlier this week.

But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to do. Most of the Christmas light shows will be shining bright, Horizon Theatre Company’s production of “The Santaland Diaries” will hit the stage at 8 p.m. Christmas night and Atlanta music legend Col. Bruce Hampton will play a free show at the Five Spot.

After the family, food and presents, if you’re looking for something to do Christmas Day, here’s a list of possibilities:

Col. Bruce Hampton And the Pharoah Gumit. 9 p.m. Dec. 25. Free. Five Spot.
Magical Nights of Lights. 5-10 p.m. nightly through Jan. 1. $40 per carload (1-9 people); check website for pricing for larger vehicles. Lake Lanier Islands Resort.
Garden Lights, Holiday Nights. The garden will be closed during the day on Christmas Day, but will open at 5 p.m. for the light show. Through Jan. 7. $18.95 adults, $12.95 ages 3-12; younger than 3 free. Atlanta Botanical Garden.
Gift of Lights. More than 1 million lights and hundreds of individual light displays fill Atlanta Motor Speedway in this 1.5 mile drive-through experience. Through Jan. 1. $15 per car. Atlanta Motor Speedway.
Lights of Life. 6-10 p.m. Sundays-Thursdays; 6-11 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays. Through Dec. 31. $5 per car; $10 per van; $20 per bus; $3 train ride; $5 pony ride. Life University.
Callaway Gardens’ Fantasy in Lights. Nightly through Dec. 30. $16-$25; $8-$12.50 ages 6-12. Callaway Gardens.
“The Santaland Diaries.” 8 p.m. Dec. 25. The show continues through Jan. 1. $40-$55. Horizon Theatre Company.

You might want a little nip of something strong, like Billy Bob Thornton in "Bad Santa" here, before being subjected to some of these tunes again and again. Photo courtesy Tracy Bennett and Miramax Films

It’s a season of joy and peace, but for some, a few of those Christmas songs are enough to make them want to steer that one-horse open sleigh into a snow bank. Our own Atlanta Braves have even contributed to the holiday noise pollution, but we’ll get to that.

A pair of websites have marked the holiday by weighing in on the musical coal in our Christmas stockings, including MSNBC and Jezebel.

MSNBC takes a look at the “11 Christmas songs we hope never to hear again.” Some of their choices aren’t surprising. There’s been plenty of disdain for Paul McCartney’s best-known contribution to the Christmas canon and MSNBC calls “Wonderful Christmastime” a “strangled-by-synthesizer mess.” A few of the site’s other choices might not be so agreeable to the Christmas music lovers out there (raise your hand Zooey Deschanel and Wham fans).

Jezebel took a different approach and allowed its online community to vote in a bracket-type tournament that just concluded yesterday. Check it out, but be warned that the language at Jezebel gets a little salty, so those sensitive to that kind of thing should steer clear. Their final four? “Wonderful Christmastime,” “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer,” “All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth” and “The Christmas Shoes.” And the winner was this sentimental heartbreaker.

We were rooting for “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer,” which also inspired a sub-par “Scooby Doo”-lite animated special in which evil cousin Mel tries to sell Grandma’s shop after the elderly victim of Santa’s reindeer disappears (and she would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for that meddling kid).

We didn’t expect the Atlanta Braves to get in on the musical mayhem, though. The team offers up a late entry for the worst Christmas song title with their take on “Jingle Bells.” Good thing they can play baseball.

What are your least favorite Christmas songs? Which yuletide tune would you like to see added to the “do not play” list?

"Parallax" by Atlas Sound, a project from Deerhunter's Bradford Cox, is among several albums from Georgia musicians showing up on year-end lists. The Black Lips' "Arabia Mountain," Mastodon's "The Hunter" and Washed Out's "Within and Without" are also making year-end best-of appearances.

This time of year is a list-lovers dream. The year-end best-of lists are coming fast and furious, and the best albums lists are the perfect conversation starter.

Among our favorites is Pop Matters exhaustive musical look back at 2011, which includes more than 20 lists, from the 20 Worst Albums to Best Rhythm and Blues to Best Indie Rock. You could explore these lists for days, and it’s likely you’ll find plenty to agree with and plenty of choices that will baffle and annoy.

Another list we always look forward to is from Decatur’s own Paste magazine. Paste’s 50 Best Albums of 2011 has a lot in common with Pop Matters’ take, especially near the top of the list.

That’s just the tip of the musical iceberg, though. Everyone has a list, it seems, from Spin to NPR.

And what about you? Tell us about your favorite albums of the year.

Even Ben Affleck had to know "Surviving Christmas" was a stinker.

Everyone has their favorite holiday movies — chances are “It’s A Wonderful Life” and “A Christmas Story” are on the list — but for every “Miracle on 34th Street,” there’s a “Santa With Muscles,” a Hulk Hogan vehicle about “an evil millionaire who gets amnesia and then believes that he is Santa Claus,” according to IMDB.

It’s Christmas clunkers like this that online ticket seller Fandango had in mind when it launched its contest for the 10 worst Christmas movie of all time. A customer poll helped shape the list, which is topped by the it-sounds-so-bad-it-might-be-good entry “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.” It might not have a touching epiphany wherein George Bailey realizes how much he has to be grateful for, but it does have Kris Kringle doing battle with ’60s era tinfoil robot aliens. And when you can’t stomach hearing Zuzu talk about angels getting their wings for the millionth time, that actually doesn’t sound so bad.

Do you agree with the Fandango respondents? What would make your personal list of worst Christmas movies?