Consumerism Countdown

Christmas shopping.

I haven’t done any yet. Zilch. Zero. Zip.

And Saturday, according to the calendars I’ve been reading lately, is December first. Golly!

Usually, because of my controlling nature, adherence to traditional gender roles, and tendency to be a martyr, I do the majority of the Christmas shopping. But some years, D and I tackle the holidays together. This year promises to be one of those collaborative efforts, provided D has a diagnosis and better treatment for his back and isn’t in a fog of pain killers. (Actually, maybe one is better able to pick out presents in a freer, less inhibited manner, when one has had a little percocet...)

One year, when I was in college and before our year-long Break Up (after which we got back together again better, stronger, wiser) during the brief time when D and I (chastely, I might note) shared an apartment with a couple of other young adults our age, we made all of our presents out of gingerbread. We made gingerbread Victorians for the three people we knew who lived in Victorian houses. We made log cabins. We made classic gingerbread houses. We made our D&D playing friend a long sword out of gingerbread. And true to form, the piece de resistance (and I am not making this up) was a gingerbread Millennium Falcon. Ah, those were the good old geekier-than-thou days.

One year after we were married but when we were still broke, we made, with mixed success, about thirty candles for people on our lists. And yes, some of them were melted down from other candles we already owned. We were that broke.

This year, I may follow through with my annual threat to just get everyone a potholder in the interest of fairness and frugality (not to mention practicality). But the reality is, at some point, I’ll make a heroic effort to get everyone something good-enough-if-not-perfect, and will undoubtedly over-compensate in some areas and fall short in others, and do too much of it all last minute.

At least I can count on help from D again, as I can every year, with the Christmas cards. I just have to find or take the right Pictures of the Girls to send out. And I have the names and addresses of new relatives to add to the list – hooray!