Peace on Earth and Good Will Toward Non-Siblings

My goodness, it's only a week until Christmas!

I have this weird "thing" about Christmas presents - I try to make as many of them by hand as I can. Sometimes that's as simple as baking a batch of cookies and lov- ingly packing them in a tin with some cheesy winter motif on the front.

And sometimes it's a smidge morehellip;shall we sayhellip;interesting.

Take the table behind me, for instance. I'm knitting my aunt a scarf out of some of that fun new yarn that has two-inch-long loops on it.

With three-foot-long, inch-thick homemade nee- dles.

The finished product will look something like the off- spring of a blown tire and a shaggy poodle, but it will be warm and cozy, which is something my aunt, who lives in California, needs when she's down here.

It's pretty much the same with all my other relatives - stuff that they need, stuff that's either handmade or a one-of-a-kind bazaar trea- sure. In the case of my older cousin, I chose to purchase a going-away-to-college gift from Pier One because she's a very handicrafty girl herself.

But there's one relative who simply is not conducive to anything handmade. Or anything that you can find at a craft fair within driving distance. Or, for that matter, anything in my price range.

My little brother.

His list is two items long: An electric drumset ($599) or Beats headphones ($200). In a deft maneuver, he pro- posed that family members collaborate to contribute cash to the purchase of the drumset, but why would I give twenty bucks towards something that'll eventually cause my hearing loss?

Hmm. Maybe I'll buy him a stockingful of coal. Which begs the question: Do I give him what's coming to him and make it real coal, or embrace all that goodwillto man stuff and get him a bunch of roughed-up black gumballs?

So many questions, so little time.

And then there's the whole question of what I want. Do I actually want anything? Maybe the com- piled works of Emerson. Maybe a book of answersin the-back mini-mysteries. Maybe that tiny solar-pow- ered robotic corgi that nods its head when you put it in a sunny window.

Ah well. Christmas is no fun if you know what you have coming.

We finally have a tree up. It's probably the tallest one we've ever had. Trees look so much shorter under the open sky that it's easy to buy a foot or two taller than you ought to. Thankfully, my mom has experience in these things and requested that the top be trimmed down to size. But trimmed it was not - at least, not by enough. And our home lop-job severed the all-important pointy top, so our tree looks more like an eight-foot baby carrot.

But who am I to be picky about trees, especially when this one is filling the com- puter room with a wonderful piney fragrance at this very minute?

Peace on earth and goodwill toward non-siblings - happy holidays, folks!