Just Hit Delete

Since the holiday season began, I have received roughly 100 emails from retailers promising me great joy and related calm if I take advantage of their sales. Harry & David, Barnes & Noble, Lillian Vernon: these are not friends of mine, but you'd think they were, as often as they populate my in box. Lillian apparently believes I am just not getting the 16 emails she sent me since mid-November. She hounds me like a bill collector--how can it be that I've ordered nothing from her yet? The grand prize goes to Pottery Barn, however: 23 emails in just 2 weeks.

Now, I know that I have created this situation, because in years past, I have treated these vendors like friends, based on how often I contacted them. I'm sure Harry & David  wonders if I converted to a faith that does not celebrate Christmas, and Barnes & Noble assumes I have joined a campaign to promote illiteracy.

Neither. I'm buying less (a lot less). And buying less is stressful. Let's just admit it. It stresses us out to think that Christmas will look smaller this year. But that stress is balanced, even overtaken, by a prevailing calm that sets in when I realize that I have paid and will pay cash for every single thing this Christmas. There is really no choice, since Dave Ramsey (my real friend) made me cancel all my credit cards. I know what you are thinking--that's crazy, that's anti-American, that's conspiratorial...

Worship fully, spend less, give more, love all. Now is the time to work on #2, spending less. Why? We are in that fragile period before Christmas where we carelessly dropping things in our actual and virtual shopping carts because:

~we've spend $20 less on child #2 and need to "even it all out"

~the teenager's pile looks smaller because it's filled with (expensive) tiny electronic gadgets and gift cards

~the little one asked for something that we didn't buy, and we've convinced ourselves that he or she will surely end up in adult psychotherapy if we don't relent.

These are lies. Lies told to us by well meaning family members and friends. Lies told to us by my old friends Lillian Vernon and her posse.

I just wish that old crowd I used to hang out with would stop bothering me. Peer pressure apparently does not know age limits.