All I Want for Christmas...

...is an iBlackBerryPhone. I mean world peace. And an iBlackBerryPhone.

Until somebody morphs the two, I can't decide which phone to get. Of course, I don't have to decide, because 1) nobody's getting me either one for Christmas, and 2) I don't need either one, at least not in the strictest meaning of the word "need." I mean, come on, I need food and water and clothing and shelter and central heating and plumbing. But I sure would like a combination BlackBerry/iPhone. At a BlackBerry price, that is.

So...somebody tell me which one I should ask Santa for, Santa being the only being likely to bring me one. Before you even ask, and I know you will, yes, I've done tons of research. I must have visited 20 iPhone vs. BlackBerry sites, and yes, I know what I want the device to do. I want it to do it all. I want it to be this industrial-strength, hard-working business accessory, but I want to have lots of fun with it as well. So in addition to everything I mentioned earlier, what I really need is help.

Help! Anyone? Should I just settle for world peace?

Aaron Sorkin for President!

...Featuring Tommy Schlamme as Vice President and John Wells as Chief of Staff, with the writing team for The West Wing filling the remaining senior staff positions. Could we possibly do any better than this? I think not.

I want these people in the White House. I want them scripting our executive branch. I even want them making critical decisions that affect our national security. As long as they enlist Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert as trusted outside advisers, that is. And as long as they run as Independents.

Mine was a West Wing Christmas, or rather pre-Christmas. Since I haven't figured out yet how to read and knit at the same time, I multitasked with President Bartlet et al in the background as I knit up all those fabulous gifts I gave. Watching the episodes in order, back-to-back, all the way through Season 4 reminded me why I wanted Aaron Sorkin to run for president in 2004.

If you're not a fan of the show, oh well. If you are, maybe we can get Aaron to give up his Studio 60 gig and serve his country.

We could do a whole lot worse—and have.

Another Charlie Brown Christmas

Not the TV show. I'm talking real life here.

A few weeks ago my friend Becky Garrison sent me an email that included a poster from Buy Nothing Christmas. Becky is a contributing editor for The Door ("The World's Pretty Much Only Religious Satire Magazine"), and that should tell you a whole lot about her. Anyway, the group helps people resist the barrage of Christmas come-ons that fuel their addiction to holiday spending. What I appreciate most about their effort is the group's lack of judgmentalism and legalism. They don't expect people to abandon Christmas or gift-giving entirely; the group helps them take incremental steps toward transforming the focus of the holiday season from consumer anxiety to stress-free joy.

Back to Charlie Brown, or rather his legendary Christmas tree. Last year we chose to rescue the worst tree on the lot from the shame of being overlooked. Not that that's a metaphor for our own lives or anything. We bought a scrawny little tree, placed it front and center in our home, decked it out for the big day, and felt all warm and good-hearted. But this year a mite infestation cleaned out the area's supply of trees before we even had a chance to get to a lot to buy one. Not to worry. We live on a wooded acre. Surely we could find something to use as a Christmas tree.

Mind you, we live in Florida. "Wooded" is at best a symbolic term. We have lots of live oaks, palmettos, and all manner of scrubby junk that grows in sandy soil. We used to have a half-dozen or so longleaf pines, but we lost them to a series of hurricanes. And besides, they were 50-feet high, and well, longleaf pines -- a bit lacking in the branch-and-needle department.

So we were left with longleaf spawns, which look kind of like branches of real pine trees that somehow got speared upright into the ground. One of these babies is now sitting in a tree stand that's bigger than the tree itself. We just have to figure out how to put a string of lights on it; the branches -- and I use that term loosely -- are too fragile to bear the weight of a normal string of lights. I thought about going to Michael's and getting a string or two of dollhouse lights, but that would defeat the purpose, you know?

We don't remember our Christmas tree from 1985 or 1993 or 2002. But we'll never forget this one. It's a symbol of our Buy Very Little, Lighten Up, Laugh a Lot attitude toward Christmas over the past few years. Who knew? Who knew that a Charlie Brown kind of Christmas would prove to be the best kind of all?

Charles Schulz would be pleased, I'm sure.

If I Don't Knit It, They Won't Git It

So I'm closing my laptop for the rest of the day and picking up my size 9 bamboo circulars in hopes of getting some gifts finished. I have this feeling I'll end up giving partially completed projects along with photos of what the gifts should look like when they're done. I have way more yarn than discretionary funds; it is truly amazing what you can knit up when you're desperate.

In reality, I have this love/hate, joyful/tortured, hopeful/disgusted relationship with Christmas that shockingly rears its beautiful/ugly head every year, just like clockwork. I embrace Christmas, and yet I want it to go away. And again I ask: Am I the only one?

Christmas Entrapment

So a South Carolina woman had her son arrested last week for opening a Christmas gift early. His great-grandmother wrapped the Game Boy Advance, put it under the tree, and told the boy not to open it. But he did, and he was charged with petty larceny. This was the second arrest for the 12-year-old, who punched a cop in November.

I love news stories like this one. You can't make this stuff up; nobody would believe it if you tried. But like lots of news stories, this one raises more questions than it answers. Here are just two (there are way too many to list):

How can they charge this kid with petty larceny? I can see why the cops agreed to arrest him, seeing as how he recently took on one of their own, but really now -- it was a gift, and the boy's name was presumably on it. I guess they could argue that it wasn't legitimately his until the 25th. I can just imagine the swarm of lawyers who will be all over this one.

And the second question, my personal favorite: What's up with putting out a Christmas gift so early? My favorite source of weekend news, NPR's fabulously funny news quiz show, "Wait Wait--Don't Tell Me," voiced my very own thoughts about this over the past weekend. Paula Poundstone, one of the show's panelists, wondered what on earth the adults were thinking when they placed a present in full view of a child with behavior problems so far ahead of time, whereupon another panelist quipped, "It almost sounds like entrapment."

Way back when, my parents never put any gifts under the tree until we kids had gone to bed on Christmas Eve. After all, the tags said the gifts were from Santa, who apparently learned penmanship from the same teacher my mother learned it from. And he didn't arrive until we were all fast asleep on the 24th, as we very well knew. Hence, no gifts till Christmas morning.

Over the years, my husband and I gradually relaxed that practice with our own kids as they grew older, which worked particularly well since they never believed Santa was real. Still, we figured putting the gifts out too early would have resulted in anxiety and not joyous anticipation. A day or two was plenty.

So…what's up with putting out gifts so early? Maybe your parents (or you, if you are a parent) put gifts under the tree in early December without any problems at all. I'd love to hear what other people think about this...were the adults in this story clueless ? Do you think they made a serious error in judgment? Or am I the only one?