For the first year ever, the idea of giving and receiving Christmas gifts does not excite me. I am an anal organized list person. I usually like to make lists of who I am making Christmas cards for, who I am giving Christmas gifts to, and have an idea of when I will make and buy all of these things. This year, though I have already made the gift list, I am looking at it more in disdain than in excitement. I am not making holiday cards as I normally have in past  years because I feel no thrill at the idea of it. It’s cynical, but who is really going to appreciate all this paper anyway? I do, but then I will never see these cards again because I am giving them away.

The first year I started making cards, I also made Ed one. He threw it away after the New Year; he loves throwing things away and deleting e-mails as soon as he reads them. I asked him why he did that, and he responded, “I didn’t know that you wanted me to keep it.” From then on out, I never made him another card again, but I did send him Christmas and birthday cards, and when I came home in July to clean out his desk, he saved all of them in a neat pile in his desk. One by one, I tore them up and tossed them in the recycling… Except for one, which I placed inside his Bible that I put in his niche.

For the first year ever, I’m not going to be getting Ed a Christmas gift.