Once the world had no South Park. But the world changed in 1997, when an unsuspecting Hollywood fat cat hired two guys to create a cartoon as a video Christmas greeting. He paid them $2000; they spent $700 and kept the rest.

Hollywood big-shots started gabbing - Tom Cruise, Steven Spielberg, George Clooney - about the foul-mouthed children. Er, but I always heard the heroes of this story were the geeks, the juvenille-minded slackers like me who spent six hours downloading that original 53-megabyte cartoon.

Because besides its foul-mouthed kids, "The Spirit of Christmas" featured a legendary kung fu match between Santa Claus and Jesus. (And some wise words from Olympic figure skater Brian Boitano.) It was funny enough to be worth the six-hour download.

You know the rest of the story - but remember how it started. Ultimately words like "pig-fucker" were deemed too hot for Comedy Central to broadcast - leaving this belovedly radical Christmas tale abandoned to its fans on the internet. Maybe that's where it belongs.