WHEN ALL IS SAID and done, the Yuletide at Chez Webb was a pretty joyful and certainly sedate affair, considering that no one got hit over the head with a frozen turkey, the TV set didn't get lobbed out into the street and Angel Gabriel kept a respectful distance from the Christmas tree.

There was, of course, the gallons of filthy water that inundated the utility room to a level of two inches, thanks to a washing machine that went doolally on Christmas Eve, but that was at least partially offset by the absence of any socks or Y-fronts among my stack of presents.

At our homestead, marital warfare is a normal consequence of Elizabeth's and my occupying the kitchen at the same time, so sanity on the Big Day itself was preserved by our deserting the premises altogether in favor of Christmas dinner out.

For a shade over 150 bucks, we bought ourselves a table at the Red Lion pub for a nosh-up of melon and smoked salmon for starters, turkey with the works for the main bit and apple tatin for finishers, all washed down with champagne - and underscored by a complete freedom from dishes to wash.

Okay, so $150 may seem a bit much to avoid an attack of dishpan hands, not to mention marital mayhem among the croutons and colanders, but the serenity it bought is something I suspect a lady named Liz Mace wishes she'd thought of.

Liz is a mother to five ankle-biters and was anxiously trying to make things all Christmasy at their home down in Southampton, along England's south coast. But when it came to decorating the tree, her brood took up couch potatoship to watch "Teletubbies," or maybe it was "Debbie Does Dallas."

At any rate, something in Liz snapped. She walked over to the television set, wrenched it from its socket, hauled it to the front door and, in a flash of Christmas inspiration that nearly all of us have felt at one time or another, threw the wretched thing out the front door, down the stairs and into the street.

Given the price of TV sets these days, her fit of pique probably cost triple what we paid for our Christmas dinner at the Red Lion, but it did the trick. The kids couldn't wait to get started hanging the lights and angels and other dangly things, lest mom decided they should follow the television.

"I felt much better afterwards," Liz Mace noted. A shade unfortunately, the family hadn't budgeted for a new television. "We'll have to make do with board games," she said.

Imagine - weeks and weeks of no "Friends," no "Seinfeld," no re-runs of O.J. Simpson driving down a superhighway at 15 mph with half the cops in California in slo-mo pursuit. That's a Christmas all in itself.

Anyway, Liz Mace wasn't the only one with a case of the Yuletide yips. Come with us now to Barry, a little town in Wales, where the holiday this year has inspired the world's first recorded case of "turkey rage."

The turkey in question was the last bird in the lone supermarket in Barry and as such was the object of the attentions of two women, only one of whom could - and, after a rather unseemly tussle down among the frozen French fries and Sara Lee pies, did - emerge victorious, bird in hand.

Afterwards, when the two ladies encountered each other in the supermarket's car park, the turkeyless one allowed as how "I hope you burn it on Christmas Day."

Whereupon the Brunnhilda with the frozen bird hoisted the thing high overhead and promptly whanged her rival over the head with it.

The whole episode was recorded on the store's security cameras and doubtless will show up eventually on "Candid Camera at Christmas," which Liz Mace should enjoy if she ever gets another TV.

Back at the Webb res, it was a Yule of pure joy, largely made so by Angel Gabriel, our nine-month-old tabby cat, whose gift to the occasion was to virtually ignore the Christmas tree - the first to survive feline forays in the15 Christmases that Elizabeth and I have had together.

Angel did snatch a toy meant for our other cat, Ali Magraw, showed an unhealthy interest in wrapping paper until he could be deterred, and was hauling a raw lamb chop up the stairs to our bedroom until we caught him at it. But he is, after all, a cat.

It's surprising how little things can mean such a lot at Christmas. Even television occasionally does something of the sort right.

Most TV broadcasts at this time of year are replete with musical extravaganzas, feature-length versions of comedies for which a half-hour is already too long, and old standbys such as "Miracle on 34th Street," "A Christmas Carol" and, for reasons that never cease to baffle me, "Gone With The Wind."

Then this year, along came WPIX, Channel 11 in New York City. It did something so simple that it almost takes your breath away. Channel 11 TV carried a program that showed only a Yule log burning in a fireplace, and accompanied by a soundtrack of Christmas carols and other seasonal songs.

For two hours, that's all you saw on WPIX, Channel 11. And for those two hours, it was the most-watched program in the biggest city in America.

"People are looking for tradition," said Betty Ellen Berlamino, general manager down at WPIX. "We thought this would be the ultimate in comfort television. The fire kept you extra warm this year."

Now that's television as it should be, and I can only hope that this idea gets across the Atlantic and that one of the scores of TV channels in Britain will show me a burning Yule log with some good carols on Christmas Day 2002.

I'll tune in, for sure. And I hope Liz Mace gets her new TV by then.

Thought for the Week: There's no reason to be difficult when, with a little effort, you can be impossible.

"Notes From A Tangled Webb" is syndicated by: