As I write this, the nation's retailers are panting like lizards at the prospect of another holiday 'shopping season', which has just kicked off with the Thanksgiving holiday. 

It occurs to me that, as a consumer culture, we're a gullible bunch.  Think about it.  How much do you need?  For myself and most of the people I know, the experience of need, or even want, is usually met by the reflexive exercise of aquisition through purchase.  It is consequently difficult to give meaningful material gifts - what do you give to the person who has everything?  Yet, during holidays, we dutifully line up to make our obligatory purchases.  If media reports are to be believed, many of us are utterly without imagination, opting to seek after those items deemed by cultural arbiters of taste as 'what's hot this year', and behaving with little decorum in the scrums of competitive shoppers.

Now I love giving gifts, especially small, unexpected ones, to friends and loved ones.  Less appealing are the expected gifts, often purchased without any thought except for checking that person off the list.  I try not to engage in that kind of reflexive buying, and I hope everyone who feels it necessary to buy me a gift is able to avoid it as well (conversely, anyone who sends a gift at all is performing a small miracle, giving of themselves to brighten the life of another, and I truly appreciate that).   

Is there a solution?  Give homemade gifts; or give gifts of time and/or services if you cannot provide a material gift.  For the recipient who 'has everything' this sort of gift will really mean something.  For those gifts which must be purchased, supporting local businesses/organizations helps enrich our lives and our communities.  In the final analysis, a good motto might be "consume less and love more". 

If I could express it as well as Bill McKibben, I would.  Here's a link to his excellent article, which was published in Grist: http://www.grist.org/feature/2007/11/20/say-no/?source=daily . 

Holiday cheer to all!