Why do kids believe a chubby guy in a flying sleigh can deliver joy across America? Because their parents do. A whopping 84 percent of grown-ups were once children who trusted in Santa's magic, and lots cling to it still.

Things are changing fast these days, with toddlers wishing for iPads, grade schoolers emailing their Christmas lists and moms wrestling over bargain toys at midnight sales. Despite all the pressures on the rituals of the season, an AP-GfK poll confirms that families are sticking by old St. Nick.

Melanie Amaro has "The X Factor."

The powerful 19-year-old vocalist from Sunrise, Fla., won the Fox talent competition Thursday over soulful 30-year-old singer Josh Krajcik of Wooster, Ohio.

There sure is a lot of cool stuff going on in "Kiss the Air," the latest effort from choreographer Elizabeth Streb. Dancers hang from spinning ladders, twirl in harnesses, splash into pools, crash into each other with yelps, and (gulp) belly-flop to the ground from ledges high enough to make you sick.

But is it dance? An intriguing question, one it's probably not best to spend much time on.

Kid Rock is teaming up with a Detroit church to give away hundreds of gift baskets and retail gift certificates to needy families in the area where he got his start and still calls home.

The musician's nonprofit organization joined Hartford Memorial Baptist Church on Wednesday to distribute 100 gift certificates for Meijer retail and grocery stores, along with more than 300 gift baskets.

You'll find a drop-waist dress when you set off on your first shopping spree of the new year, and you probably already can find a flouncy ruffle attached to a chic, trim jacket or sheath in stores. But for all the talk about fast fashion, few looks move directly from the runway to the real world without some tweaks and adjustments.

Designers, manufacturers and retailers use the months between splashy previews and on-sale dates to harness big ideas and turn them into the garments they hope people will find appealing and flattering, and motivate them to buy.

British singer George Michael has been discharged from the Vienna hospital where he has been for the past month and is due to fly back home for Christmas, Austrian media reported Thursday.

The British singer, 48, who had been in intensive care with a severe bout of pneumonia, left hospital on Friday morning and was taken by limousine to Vienna airport, the Oesterreich tabloid reported, citing hospital workers.

Angelina Jolie's directorial debut, a Bosnian wartime love story which sparked controversy here, will be shown in Sarajevo from Thursday, distributors said.

The movie, a love story between a Muslim woman and a Serb man, prompted speculation in local media that it was the story of a Muslim rape victim who fell in love with her Serb attacker.

The Academy Award statuette that Orson Welles won for the original screenplay of "Citizen Kane" was auctioned for more than $861,000 Tuesday in Los Angeles.

Nate D. Sanders Auctions spokesman Sam Heller said bidders from around the world, including David Copperfield, vied for the Oscar.

With hairdo, handbag and hubris, she dominated — and divided — Britain for a decade. Now a film about Margaret Thatcher is doing it all over again.

"The Iron Lady" stars Meryl Streep as Britain's first female prime minister, whose neo-Victorian values and free-market ideology helped transform a battered post-imperial country into an economically dynamic but industrially depleted and increasingly unequal society.

A mascara ad featuring Taylor Swift has been pulled from U.S. magazines following a complaint that it had been digitally altered to enhance the looks of the chart-topping country music star.

The National Advertising Division (NAD) of the Council of Better Business Bureaus Claims said Proctor and Gamble, maker of CoverGirl cosmetics "discontinued the advertisement in question" after it challenged its claims.