The grinch-ly fool

*sigh* As the Holiday Season gears up to run over December, I've had to think about something I hate thinking about: gift wrapping. This is not to say I don't like dressing up gifts I give. I do - but I hate gift wrap. Gifts from me often come in bags of pretty fabric, baskets, or other useful sorts of containers. I once gave a wedding gift in a cooler (a neat collapsing cooler, which I packed with picnic plates that looked like fancy china, silverware, resin champagne glasses, and a really nice meal for when they got to their honeymoon. I think I did tie silver ribbon on the handle.) I love pretty little reusable boxes - gift and package all at once.

And most of my friends do something similar, so stuff gets circulated and recycled. We do mathom exchanges (nifty stuff that is suitable for regifting gets regifted). This year, a few of us are even considering the radical notion of saying enough. Enough stuff. Instead of a gift exchange, how about a potluck meal together and a charitable donation?

And for the exchange that I can't do that for, well, a few gift bags are easy to whip up, and edible gifts are at least less likely to end up in the trash.

But what has been getting me is that I've already heard Christmas songs on the radio - and two of them I heard before Halloween. No, no, no. Can we give Thanksgiving its chance in the sun, please? And Halloween? I mean, so far from Halloween taking over Christmas, we have the reverse. Jack Skellington, look out.

If it keeps up like this, I am hereby threatening to distribute my simple gifts in skeleton fabric, and lest you think this is an empty threat, I have the fabric.