Whatever is boxed and wrapped

"Somehow, we've allowed the success or failure of the Christmas season to be judged by the volume of retail sales, and this looks to be another down year. We've allowed our whole economy to become 70 percent dependent on consumer spending, of which Christmas sales are the make-or-break component. Not good. An economy that is over-reliant on consumer spending is a sick economy" (Richard Doak, retired Editor of the Des Moines Register).

He said other things, of course, in his guest editorial printed in yesterday's paper, but something about those particular lines made an impact on me. Our assessment criteria

have become skewed. I understand that stores need such comparisons and calibrations. They are in business to make a profit, not make sentiment -- not that their means to making a profit can't coincide with someone else's path to creating sentiment. Someone, after all, sold the cloth that became the quilt that became the family heirloom. Someone, after all, sold the

birthstones that were set into a ring that was sold by someone else that was subsequently sold by still another to a couple of kids and their father that became the mother's prized possession.

No, the two are not mutually exclusive; it's just that neither are they necessarily synonymous in the way we have fallen into behaving. "Christmas spirit" has always had more to do with the reasons behind and

associations around a gift, than with the gift itself.

Perhaps this is all self-

protection -- inoculating myself against any possible disappointment on the part of recipients opening gifts that I have been a part of giving. It is that week, after all -- and in our family's case, it is "that night." Tonight the chairs will be

crowded around

our tree, one of the several iPod Christmas playlists will be offering background soundtrack to the festivities, and before long, the floor will be littered with paper and ribbons. And we will all, I suspect, be feeling the pressure. "Will it all

be special enough?"

If I have an ounce of sense and mental presence during all these festivities, I'll remember to look up into the tree. Amidst the miniature lights hang an enormous diversity of ornaments -- some whimsical, like the miniature jug of Vermont maple syrup, the tiny replica of Barrington and the miniature sock monkey that

reminds me of my Grandmother; some quite expensive, like the hand-blown Italian glass balls and the sterling silver reindeer. And while Lori would no doubt make a different selection, the most valuable of them all, as far as I'm concerned, is the scissored and folded Santa made out of construction paper and glued-on cotton balls that I made as a child and presented to my parents. All these years it

has hung on their Christmas tree until making its way back into my hands a Christmas or two ago. From an economic stand point it would hardly register on any scale. A penny it might be worth -- if that; which is to put in negative terms what just as well could be positive: it is priceless. Who, after all, could assess the value of their knowing how much I had labored over the cutting and the folding and the gluing

and drawing with only them in mind? And who could possibly calculate the value to me -- and according to what conceivable currency -- all these decades later to receive it back in the knowledge that they had kept it, displayed it, preserved it, and enjoyed the memories attached to it? To be sure, the Santa is a little worse for all the years and all the wire ornament hangers that have

tried to keep it on a branch; but as far as I'm concerned it could hardly be more perfect.

If I am paying attention at all tonight amidst the laughter and the chatter and the expressions of appreciation -- if I feel even a nano-second of apprehension -- I'll think to look for construction paper Santa up

among our branches and remember that what is going on right that very moment -- our very presence in each other's keeping, those voices, the memories we are making, the intentional choice to be together in the face of countless alternatives, and the implied desire to please as a reflection of deep fondness and profound love -- is the most important measure of Christmas this year.

The retailers, without doubt, will have played some part in it, and if we have helped to make their Christmas brighter, good. I'm glad we could help. But their's will be the smallest part -- akin to the part that a match plays in a 4th of July grand finale. Whatever winds up in the boxes and bags, we will be enjoying the smiles and the affections and the circumstances and the ties that bond us all together, and the mystic, perhaps inarticulate sense that it all finds its context in a love infinitely larger than our own -- the real colors and fireworks of Christmas.

Merry Christmas.