Mega Millions rolls over to $206M

Around Christmastime, jackpots often get huge, but rarely the size of Tuesday's in the Mega Millions lottery.

It's worth $206 million for the annuity, $151.9 million for the cash, according to the lottery's website.

Powerball also has a whopper of a prize being drawn Christmas Eve: $125 million, $80.2 million cash.

There are lots of stories of lotteries paying off big-time in late December -- and one spectacular bust: No one ever claimed a $68 million Mega Millions jackpot won in New York on Christmas Eve 2002.

But last year, on Christmas Day, Jeffrey and Christine Pintuff of upstate Wilton won a Powerball jackpot of $48.8 million, and took the $24.8 million cash.

The biggest-ever Christmas present was the $314.9 million win in Powerball on Dec. 25, 2002, scored by a West Virginia ticket.

That seems to be the only jackpot that tops the current one for a Mega Millions or Powerball drawing on or just before Dec. 25.

Last year, Mega Millions came close, reaching $168 million on Christmas Eve. It rolled over to $200 million for the Dec. 28 drawing, then kept on growing until it reached $380 million on Jan. 4, when tickets in Idaho and Washington state won. The total cash payout was the biggest in U.S. history: $240 million. The only bigger advertised annuity was a $390-million Mega Millions jackpot split by tickets in New Jersey and Georgia.

Other big wins in the second half of December:

-- $165 million won in Mega Millions on Dec. 21, 2009, by Richard and Mary Morrison of Belle Terre. It was Long Island's largest jackpot. After the Morrisons, then of Miller Place, claimed their lottery winnings, they became embroiled in disputes with Suffolk County over property taxes and a county contract formerly held by a nonprofit run by Richard Morrison.

-- $163 million won in Mega Millions on Dec. 18, 2007, by tickets sold in Chicago and upstate Morris County.

-- $128.6 million won in Powerball on Dec. 26, 2009, by a Kentucky ticket.