My Chrismas list

Here's the other thing that I always struggle with around Christmas. I don't need anything. I have everything that I need for a complete and fulfilling existence. In fact I ave an exhorbitant number of things. I am proud of one thing though. In the last year I have thrown or given away more than I have purchased or received. That means that for the first time in my life I have fewer things year on year.

At last count I had 42 button down shirts. I realized this as I was going through my closet the first weekend in October, I decided to wear each one without repeating. I should get through the last of them this week. I can go a week without repeating a pair of jeans, three without repeating a pair of pants. I can go two and a half weeks without doing laundry and not have to worry about dirty underwear, t-shirts, or socks. I have over 700 books. For about three years I cultivated my library, buying three-four books a week. I haven't bought a book for myself since I got married. I haven't been inside Borders in six months. I have 65 coffee cups. Some I haven't used--ever. You can imagine how a thiry percent discount at Starbucks helped this collection.

This sickens me, when I look around and recognize the gluttony. That's what it is. It's not greed, because it's not a conscious drive for more things. It is an inability to stop consuming. Around Christmas this feeling consumes me. As I go out to stores, ostensibly to buy presents, I look around and I see all of the cool new gadgets and gizmos--the new styles and books. I look around and I want. Oh do I ever want. The hunger fills and consumes me. I start making mental lists of the things that I want so that when Mom calls I have a list ready. I am engulfed in the flood of desire and swept away in its raging waters. I am sucked in chewed up and spit up a driveling beggar eager for Christmas morning.

This is not what I want, this is not what I want to think about on Christmas morning. I don't want to sit in glassy-eyed anticipation wondering what my haul will be, while trying not to show how gluttunous I am.

Every year I make a new resolution: to lead a simpler life, to consume less and to allow myself to go without things I think I need. And every year Christmas comes around, and I am thrown back into the revolving door of consumerism.

So here is my Christmas list: I only want one thing:

Your help. I don't want any Christmas presents. It will hurt, and I will suffer on Christmas morning. It is nigh on to impossibl;e for me to write even now. I can't describe the thoughts running through my mind.

If you want to give me something that I can open on Christmas morning make a donation to something you think I support in my name. You know, a llama for a peruvian family or a lama for a Tibetan one. Or give some money to the Village or th Fre Methodist Mexican Mission. It will be put to better use.

If you see something you just have to buy for me save it. Give it to me in six months when I won't associate it with Christmas.

So make my gift this: Christmas. Help me to regain Christmas. Help me to understand appreciate, and love this holiday again.