The Christmas season has kicked into high gear, with parades, tree lightings and other celebrations on the calendar this week.

Visitors to Chattanooga this week for the BlueCross Bowl will find plenty of options when it comes to places to eat and the even better news is you won't have to travel far from Finley Stadium to find them.

DEAR ABBY: My husband has a "best friend" from childhood I'll call "Artie," but they have little in common anymore. Finding things to do with him and his wife is a struggle.

After several wins at film festivals around the world, "Songbirds: A Documentary" can add "Emmy nominated" to its resume.

The Chattanooga-Hamilton County Health Department inspects restaurants twice a year and grades the businesses on a 100-point scale.

Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity heart surgeon best known as the host of TV's Dr. Oz Show after rocketing to fame on Oprah Winfrey's show, announced Tuesday that he is running for Pennsylvania's open U.S. Senate seat as a Republican.

Two brothers arrested for an alleged attack on Jussie Smollett recounted for Chicago police how the ex-"Empire" actor orchestrated the hoax, telling them via text message to meet him "on the low," paying for supplies and holding a "dry run" in downtown Chicago, the lead investigator testified Tuesday.

If it's been a while since you've been to Gatlinburg, a lot has remained the same.

I have been making Hot Browns for years, long before I actually went to the Brown Hotel in Louisville, Kentucky, to have my first authentic Hot Brown.

If you think the latest crop arriving on The Peach Truck looks decidedly more orange, you'd be right.

We have Thanksgiving feasts behind us, and so much before us.

Latkes - potato pancakes - are traditional fare during the eight-day Jewish festival of Hanukkah, which this year ends on Dec. 6.

DEAR ABBY: I am a 44-year-old woman who has been married for three years. We all have a past. Unfortunately, I made mistakes in mine that I foolishly mentioned to my husband when he asked.

It's beginning to look a little like Christmas, and it won't be long until signs of the season are everywhere.

The GEM Theatre in downtown Calhoun, Georgia, will host performances from White Water Junction, Faye and Jessie Bentley, Trey and Andrew Bentley, Jule Medders and Steven Pearson on Dec. 18 during its eighth annual Dana Patterson Merry Christmas Concert.

Thanks to her grandmother, Amahri Edwards-Jones already had a pretty good idea of who Donna Summer was when she got the part as Duckling Donna and Mimi in "Summer: The Donna Summer Musical."

DEAR ABBY: I have two mothers: my biological mother and Mom, who raised me.

Virgil Abloh, a leading designer whose groundbreaking fusions of streetwear and high couture made him one of the most celebrated tastemakers in fashion and beyond, has died of cancer. He was 41.

Animal neglect used to be such a problem on the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota, with basic services like sterilization out of reach for many due to poverty and remoteness, that packs of stray dogs would sometimes bring traffic to a halt on the main highway.

DEAR ABBY: My husband of 35 years moved out three years ago. I contribute a lot to his household because he's on disability. I have a great job and travel as a photographer. According to him, I was gone too much.

Dollywood is strikingly beautiful dressed in her winter finest. Shades of green and gold, red and silver bedecked with glitter and baubles - the park is a coat of many colors when Smoky Mountain Christmas gets underway each holiday season.

Here's this week's list of Chattanooga-area events.

Dan O'Brien, who has served on the faculty of the Sewanee Writers' Conference for more than a decade, is an award-winning playwright and widely published poet, with a long list of honors.