It’s the last day of November.

Normally that’d be the demarcation line between “Christmas” and “not Christmas”. But you know how that goes these days. The Friday after Thanksgiving seems to be our new acceptable date to put up our Christmas stuff, mostly because it’s convenient – no work, and with family in town to help out. So most of our stuff is out, and we’re getting our first of two Christmas trees this weekend.

The other tradition that starts around good ol’ schwarzer Freitag is the answering of the question, “So what do you want for Christmas?”

I’d like to be clear – this is a wonderful problem to have. First, I have people who actually want to buy me presents. I’ll never overlook that or take it for granted. The problem gets better – I don’t really want anything, or at least much of anything.

Most things I can think of that are are very much “stuff” – things that would be nice to have, but that I don’t really need. I don’t think this is a unique station in life for a thirty-something dad with a wife and kids, and I’m probably just an echo of some continuous noise on the internet on this topic – but dammit, I’m trying to get back into writing, and possibly even capturing some interesting things about my/our lives for my kids to read one day.

The things I can think of that we need are an entirely different, and mostly expensive subject.

So, with this post, I intend to announce an well overthought forced blog-march. For the next week or two, each day I’m going to pontificate and loudly overanalyze a few things I’d like for Christmas. It may be general or specific. The challenge to me will be to think of things that aren’t just stuff. And things that aren’t directly (or at an angle) for the kids. Like this, or this. Side note: see? Expensive.

For instance, I think it’d be really neat to have one of these – but it is expensive, and I honestly have no idea what I’d do with it.

I’ll start later this afternoon.