Author Archives: sonsyrea

Finding a Buck and a Quarter – Worth More than a Buck and a Quarter

Posted on by sonsyrea

 

 

 

Imagine that you woke up one morning with a serious jones for a jolt of caffeine from the nearby store where you can get your favorite shot for a-buck-o-nine.  You scoop up fifty cents you had left on your dresser, search your purse for two quarters and a dime you thought you saw there the day before, but you come up short. Your purse has only a quarter, two dimes, and three pennies. Not to worry. You are sure you must have a few coins left over in your other pocketbooks, so you go to your closet and frantically search all twelve of your purses. You find a penny. You are still short a few coins.

 

You wanted your morning caffeine fix, but now you really need it. You consider dipping into the digital coin bank you and your husband share, but you have agreed to the rule of never taking anything out of this bank until it reaches the $100 mark and you take these coins to the bank together to deposit them in your joint account.  You consider using one of the rare $2 bills you have received over the years on special occasions. You decide against it because you don’t really want to exchange a rare currency for something as common as a morning fix.

 

You decide to use the coffee you have at home instead of wasting more time searching for coins to get flavored coffee at the store around the corner.  After you gulp down the coffee, you feel satisfied, sure that the caffeine will kick in almost instantly. You dart out the front door for your morning power walk around the neighborhood. But first, you grab your iPod from your car parked out front.  As you exit your car, you notice a dollar bill on the ground. You pick it up and wish you had found it a half hour earlier when you were frantically searching for change for a morning cup of coffee. You feel like you are luckier than if you had found a penny because you have found a whole dollar.

 

You begin your power walk happily, then you notice something shiny on the ground. It’s a quarter. Now you have a dollar and a quarter that have been coincidentally dropped in your path for you to find. You have taken this power walk every morning for several years but never found any money. Yet, you found some this morning, of all mornings. The irony makes you smile. There must be a message in this for you.  You think back over everything that has happened this morning from the time you realized you needed a buck-o-nine for a cup of coffee until the time you found a dollar and a quarter. What do you think the God/The Universe was trying to tell you through this experience?

The Joys of Gratitude

Posted on by sonsyrea

One morning recently I woke up feeling particularly lousy, depressed, dreadful.  I had dreamt crazy, anxiety dreams all night and lamented the day ahead.  Then I was reminded that my grandmother used to tell me, “don’t look at what you don’t have. Thank God for what you do have.”

 

I began counting my blessings.  I thanked God that I could get myself out the bed rather than having to wait for someone to carry me to the bathroom. I thanked God for my health and mobility.  I remembered that a friend of mine is struggling to see, and thanked God that I do not have that challenge. I lay still fifteen minutes thanking God for many things. I got out of bed feeling much better, and by mid-morning I was actually excited about many possibilities for the day and for the near future.

 

As I showered, I began thinking about prayers long-ago prayed and long-ago answered. I felt even better. Throughout the day songs on gospel radio reminded me to “take the shackles off my feet so I can dance.”  I sat on my front steps and simply enjoyed the brightness of the sun and the sound of the birds.

 

In the evening, I got a few good laughs from a sit-com I had long-ago labeled sheer buffoonery, “Sanford and Son,” which my grandmother loved. Around dinnertime, I realized I had a wide variety of meal choices. I could pull food from the fridge or freezer, or go to one of more than a dozen restaurants within a five-mile radius.  I could go to one of more than five grocery stores or one of the half a dozen fast-food places nearby. And, as broke as I felt, I had enough money in my purse to eat anything I wanted. I could even go to a seafood market and order fresh shrimp or crabs. I was satisfied with a salad I made from ingredients I already had.

 

Why couldn’t I appreciate the richness of my choices? Why shouldn’t I appreciate the various manners of richness I already have (spiritual growth), rather than bemoan the riches (financial abundance) I still crave?

 

After dinner, I retreated to the deck with my journal and decided to begin sorting through the thoughts that made me sad or left me feeling defeated.

 

I began acknowledging lessons learned from failures. How much longer would I measure my happiness by the amount of cash on hand or the amount of money I was making on a job? Why had I become so angry and anxious that angry and anxious thoughts ran rampage through the night draining restfulness from my sleep?

 

Being unemployed, I realized, means I have a wealth of time on my hands to apply for jobs, in the process becoming clear about my strengths and weaknesses, and beginning to fully appreciate the skills and experiences I have mastered over the years.

 

I labeled a section of my journal for recording blessings only, determined to jot down notes of gratitude frequently.

 

My grandmother planted those seeds of gratitude in my youth. I am now noticing flowers I had been overlooking in my constant rush for the next best thing.

 

Let’s share some gratitude today. What are you grateful for today? Tell us the first thing that comes to mind.

Correcting a Corrupted Moral Compass

Posted on by sonsyrea

 

One Sunday I was in line at a Safeway when I overheard a teen telling his mom to check the receipt because he thought the clerk neglected to ring-up a particular item.

 

“That’s very honest of that young man,” I thought.  When I heard the mother telling the store clerk about a blackout they had at church earlier, asking if the store had experienced a power failure too, I made the connection. “Oh, they just came from church. It figures.”

 

The next morning I was leaving a Food Lion when I greeted a stranger pushing his son in a cart with a kiddie car attached to the front. The man smiled kindly. As he reached down to pull the little boy out of the car, I smiled and greeted the boy, apparently two or three-years-old. As the small boy steadied himself on his feet I noticed a new bag of toys he was holding. His father looked away.

 

“Oh, you got new toys,” I said, still smiling. I remembered hearing of mothers hiding stolen objects in their babies diapers, and remembered stories of parents walking their children out of a store wearing stolen shoes. “Some of their moral compass will be off the mark,” I thought. “Their sense of right and wrong will be different from the norm.”

 

I walked home thinking about the individuals who’s moral compass was corrupted generations before they were even born. Grandparents who lied, cheated, and stole – and justified it – for instance, certainly might raise children with those same survival skills and beliefs.  Parents who raise their children with “anti-government-screw-the-system” sentiments also are likely to raise kids with out-law sensibilities. Knowing right from wrong gets a little tricky when your primary provider has justified wrong-doing, and even made it a way of life.

 

I hailed from a tradition of flouting convention, challenging the system, and establishing new traditions. But I had a girlfriend who trained me better. I remembered walking through the grocery store with my best friend, sampling fruit or opening a soda. She would say I was being trifling and if I got arrested she would not stand by me. Her mother, although not a churchgoer, was adamant about following rules and obeying the law.

 

I outgrew that trifling habit, conceding that sampling cherries against store policy was hardly worth the risk.  So what if the store might be selling me sour or tasteless cherries made to look sweet to fool me into buying them.  Never mind that the store was making me pay 50 cents for a soda it probably paid 30 cents for. In my mind, this was out-right exploitation of my purse. Stealing, so this reasoning went, was a mild form of defiance against a corrupt system. It was a swipe at Capitalism.  I always paid my taxes – to the best of my ability, but my accountant, whose mindset was the same as mine, happened to believe that the system taxed us poor people harder than it taxed the rich. So, we should take whatever license we could to pay as little as possible. She managed to zero out all my income one year, telling me that’s how the rich white folks do it.  I realized the rich white folks had attorneys to fight the IRS. I did not. I began taking my tax work to a professional service.

 

It would take years for me to recalibrate my moral compass, scraping off the rust of my elders’ resentment against “the system”, and clearing away their disdain for convention.  Admittedly, their experiences with the system, convention, and traditions had been harsh, confining, confusing.  My experiences were different, and once I realized this, I realized I could adjust my internal compass accordingly.

 

I ended up moving to a neighborhood where sampling is the norm. Some stores set out samples around the store (Whole Foods and Fresh Market). To keep up with them the Safeway manager in this community assured me that anytime I want to sample anything to just let someone know and they would open it for me.

2012 Watch Parties

Posted on by sonsyrea

Previously published in The Washington Post.  

Quentin James, a Prince George’s County youth serving as national director of the Sierra Club’s Student Coalition, joined a crowded State of the Union watch party at Busboys and Poets at 5th & K, Tuesday night, and mentioned a meeting he has scheduled with Vice President Biden on Wednesday.

 

“I think young people definitely were excited about the speech. But they definitely wanted to hear more about student loans and more about getting young people involved in the greening economy,” James said. That’s what he plans to tell the veep when he and a delegation of Sierra club student reps visit the White House.

 

James spoke for just a few minutes after watching the speech with a crowd of very opinionated activists, many of them blogging, tweeting, texting and live-streaming from their laptops at the venue known for its cultivation of activism. Quite different from the crowd a few blocks south on K Street, where the African American Leadership Council’s (AALC) youth contingent prepared to carry the party line, the crowd at Busboys was decidedly more critical.

 

The two watch parties, which I visited briefly, hanging out with my friend, were among 2,700 watch parties nationwide, according to Chicago reporter Lynn Sweet who tweeted about them. In the Nation’s Capitol, and surrounding areas organizations – including the Tea Party Express and the Green Party – hosted watch parties. Families and individuals hosted watch parties in their homes, too. It was déjà vu’ all over again.

 

Remember when we cheered at watch parties, awed by Obama’s nomination acceptance speech, and again at inauguration parties the day he was sworn in? The cheering was noticeably tempered at the two watch parties I attended Tuesday. The AALC’s party for the 40-and young (and some of us who defied the age limit), was held at Lima Restaurant at 14th and K. There, nattily-dressed men in dark suits and white shirts, and young women professionally dressed for government, applauded the part pitch: four million Americans were out of work in the six months prior to Obama taking office; three million Americans have been hired in the past six months.

 

Patrick Gaspard, White House advisor and executive director, Democratic national Committee, Four years later, this January we’re enjoying unseasonably warm days, but so many are out in the cold economically. They have lost jobs, lost, houses, lost hope. We’re told there’s a rainbow at the end.

 

Gaspard, executive director, Democratic National Committee, charged the supporters with delivering the message of this administration’s accomplishments. “You all remember when Barack Obama was sworn in that cold day in January when he stood on the steps of the Capitol, the steps and the Capitol that were built by slaves…” His message was audience appropriate to be sure.  Four years after that fateful day of swearing in our first African American president, we are enjoying unseasonably warm weather, but so many are out in the cold economically, having lost jobs, lost, houses, lost hope. We’re told there’s a rainbow at the end – a rainbow we must help create. He acknowledged the discontent in the black community, but reminded the crowd of its promise. “You all are the most powerful generation of African Americans that ever lived in this country.

 

“We know what we inherited. We know where we come from. We know where we are today,” Gaspard told the not-quite-capacity crowd of young professionals, detailing the commander-in-chief’s accomplishments. “It’s now your responsibility to go out and amplify that message. Let people know we are at a make-or-break point for the middle class.”

 

Back at Busboys and Poets, the crowd of activists, debated whether “the people” are doing their part. The people are challenging the establishment of corporate greed and irresponsibility, they said. Look at Occupy movements across the country. The people are challenging criminal injustice. Recall the case of Troy Davis. A couple of the brothers at Busboys were disappointed that their president had failed to address either of those matters.

 

The mere excitement of the President’s speech and planned watch parties had excited me, harkened me back to the glory days of 2008. That year, that campaign had been exciting beyond anyone’s imagination. This year, my excitement is tempered by the harsher reality of what change requires, what it exacts.  I got the feeling at the watch parties that others’ excitement is tempered as well – for now. But it’s early in the season.

 

 

 

 

eat entertainment – just enough industry insight and relationship drama to keep me coming back.  The show airs at 10 p.m. on ABC. Click here for previews (http://beta.abc.go.com/shows/scandal), and to join the discussion of the show. Cast members will be answering questions live on twitter during the first broadcast tonight.

 

Grateful for Gifts of a Lifetime

Posted on by sonsyrea

Previously published in The Washington Post. 

By the time you read this blog, last weekend’s record cold temperatures and record October snowfalls will be so – well, “last week”. The Post’s picture perfect snow-covered pumpkin will have melted from our collective memory. We will be in the throes of some new phenomenon or calamity perhaps.  Our world spins quite fast, doesn’t it? But we can slow down as the year draws to an end – and here’s how.  Simplify. We can do it. I am taking my cue from my co-worker’s eight-year-old daughter.

 

Business was slow Sunday morning at the bookstore where I work. So, I had time to chat with my colleague Christia as we awaited customers as the check out station. Our Christmas displays were spread on tables and racks in front of us. Godiva chocolate bars with gingerbread people on the wrappers right under our nose.

 

“Is your daughter getting excited about the holidays?” I asked, thinking I already knew the answer.

 

I really was expecting to hear about the hottest new toys this year and how Christia planned to pay for them on our wages. I don’t have children, and the nieces and nephews I helped mother are grown now, so I’m not feeling the pressure.  But I wonder about unemployed parents and underemployed parents facing added pressure this holiday season. So, I was delighted to hear about Christia’s daughter.

 

“She doesn’t get too worked up about gifts,” she said. “She really cares more about the celebrations, getting together for parties, the camaraderie.”

 

“Really? How’d you manage to teach her that so young?”

 

“She’s never been into getting a whole lot of stuff,” Christia said.  “When I brought her in here to buy a book, I gave her a $20 bill and told her to get whatever she wanted. She found a bookmark for $2.39, pulled out a coupon she had gotten from school… and handed me back my change. She said that was all she needed. A book mark for a book she got from a friend.”

 

“She didn’t even try to keep the change for her piggy bank?” I asked. “That’s pretty cool.”

 

“She’s a good kid,” Christia said. “I feel really blessed.”

 

I’m guessing the child picked up her sense of contentment from her parents.  My mother worked hard to teach my nine siblings and I to be grateful for what we had, but I was down right retarded when it came to these lessons. She had insisted that I wear what I already had in the closet before asking her for more clothes. After decades of resistance and rebellion I get it.  I realize now that I can save money – and time spent on wardrobe management – by opening this golden gift of gratitude my mother gave me in my youth. I was reminded of this gift of gratitude after listening to Christia talking about her daughter’s contentment.

 

I was reminded that the best gifts we give each other cannot be bought in a store or stuffed in a box.  The gifts of compassion during difficult times, the gifts of laughter shared when times are good. Gifts of holiday traditions and family memories are the gifts that last us forever, right?  Tell us some of your most treasured non-material, or inexpensive gifts from family and friends.  Was it a blanket someone knitted for you, giving you cozy comfort for years to come? Was it a small plant you delighted watching as it grew from five inched to three feet tall? Was it 20 years of family feasts on Thanksgiving and Christmas? Do tell – in your comments here. We can simply, slow it down, scale it back when we need to right?

 

My Grandmother’s Rock

Posted on by sonsyrea

“We know we are beautiful. And ugly too…. We stand on top of the mountain, free within ourselves.”

–Langston Hughes

 

BET’s “Black Girls Rock” awards show broadcast Sunday inspired me to honor my grandmothers, who raised me to rock. I grew up with three grandmothers – a hint of abundance from the start, I think. I had mymaternal grandmother, Irene Thomas, recently anointed as First Mother of Tenth Street Baptist Church in Northwest; my paternal grandmother, Sis. Wala Waheed (Willie Tate), honored as a pioneer in the Nation of Islam by the Muslim community at Masjid Muhammad. Then there was my biological grandmother, Grandma Fuller, who told me religion was some silly s*-)!

 

Some of their insight, wisdom, and advice were clear and powerful enough to last me a lifetime; some of it I knew would not fit the world they were leaving in my hands.

 

Grandma Thomas and I debated the merits of dating vs. marriage.  This year we celebrated her marriage 72 years of marriage to my grandfather.  But ten years ago, she and I debated the merits of marriage vs. dating. I was a young woman playing the field – and getting played – when she offered her advice on marriage and men. “Men have to get a license to go fishing, go hunting or anything else they want to do. Make them get a license to be with you,” she told me one day. Confidently, I disagreed, “Grandma I am not a sport, nothing to be played with, not to be owned.” She shook her head, at her wit’s end. I ended up married, but in my own time and on my own terms, I’d like to think. Our needs and values were different, I realized, and that’s o.k.

 

GrandWillie had hung a small wooden plaque inscribed with the words, “Man Makes the Living: A Woman Makes Life Worth Living,” in her home when I was growing up. After a few years of being out in the real world I reported back to her that this bit of conventional wisdom had been set on its head. “Men these days aren’t marrying women unless you’re making at least as much as they make,” I told her. “That ain’t no real man,” she insisted. She had been widowed by her first husband, then managed to live mostly off his pension, plus money she made providing child care for other working mothers, and help from her own children when they began working. My appreciation of independence and self-reliance was different from hers, and that, too, was o.k.

 

I learned much from and with my grandmothers. Over board games, on shopping trips, at religious events, in their gardens, in their kitchens, at their hospital bedsides when they grew old, I learned more than I might ever pen. My relationship with them was better than their relationships with their own daughters. I was their second chance to get it right, and they seized upon it. I am sure GrandWillie, who passed almost three years ago, is smiling on me daily. Grandma Thomas, who turned 92 this year, tells me often, “I love you, and I pray for you every day. I pray for all my grandchildren.” I am sure she does.

 

While I have honored Grandma Thomas and GrandWillie throughout my life, I am just now beginning to glorify Grandma Fuller. Grandma Fuller had 11 babies by a married man. I am leading the charge to dignify her passions, however, unwise they were. She married her “babies’ daddy” when the youngest was a teen.  “Grandma was a ho,” one of my sisters said flatly when I shared this bit of our family history. She was not a “whore,” I insisted. “She was, uh, unconventional.”  She loved who she loved, how she loved, I thought. I had the luxury of marveling at her boldness in love. She had birthed wonderful beings into this world – against so many odds.  (It took her children a whole generation and a lot of hard work to overcome the shame of growing up “bastards.” About ten years ago they initiated the Annual Fuller Family Ball to amplify family honor and celebrate what we have become. But for me, she had set a mold for thinking – and being – outside the box.)

 

My grandmothers were each unique in their needs, beliefs, and family values. I could not possibly have embraced all of what either had to offer, but I am grateful to have collected enough pearls of wisdom from each of them to fashion a fine necklace of sorts.

 

I was happy to see Patti LaBelle, Gladys Knight, and Shirley Ceasar, honored on BET’s “Black Girls Rock.” But I found conspicuously absent our honorary grandmother, Maya Angelou, whose poems “Phenomenal Woman” and “Still I Rise” inspired us all. Langston Hughes’s manifesto came to mind as I thought about my Grandmothers – and the many other women (sisters, friends, aunts, and mentors) who have inspired me throughout my life. I am their rock, and they are mine. Black women are complex beings. We are beautiful in our ugliness and ugly in our beauty. But we rock on.

Lord Have Mercy on Jack Johnson

Posted on by sonsyrea

Previously published in The Washington Post. 

As the sentencing for former Prince George’s County Executive Jack B. Johnson looms, I began wondering how his closest family and friends are feeling.  I imagined they are sad to see him suffer (although he did it to himself). I wondered whether they tried to correct and rein him in when they could. I considered why his community loved him so.

 

Jack Johnson was not born in Prince George’s, but the County loved him dearly. He championed their cries against police brutality when he first campaigned for the office. Once elected, he continued to worship with them at their churches.  He danced the electric slide with them at their backyard cookouts. He promised jobs to their children, and found money for some of their community projects. He wielded power the way so many wished they could.

 

One elderly fellow in the County told me years ago, “If I was in office all my friends would have jobs!” He laughed heartily, and I understood that he and so many others were living vicariously through Jack. But now what?

 

His arrest was embarrassing to those who voted for him and stood by him through early investigations by the media. (I’ll discuss my personal part in this mess in a future blog. Promise.)

 

Disappointment, betrayal, anger, fury at those who brought him down, outrage at him for being so stupid. All those emotions must have swirled overhead in the County after his arrest and confession.  All these emotions had like clouds when I lived in D.C. and my mayor Marion Barry was arrested, led away in handcuffs on TV.

 

For many of my relatives and friends who moved from the District to Prince George’s as they prospered, seeing their elected leader in an incriminating videos last week was a double-blow to the head.  Jack’s arrest last year had been too painful to discuss. We mostly avoided the conversation for months. But with sentencing scheduled for Jack and his wife next week, I broached the subject.

 

“So, what do you think about the Johnson’s going to jail?” I asked one of my aunts who lives in the County.  She reminded me of how my Granddad had dealt with his wayward sons.  If you do the crime, you’ll do the time. Simple as that.

 

“Honey, when the police came to get your uncle… your grandfather told them, “He’s upstairs. Go on up there and get him. Second room at the top of the stairs. He’s the one in the top bunk.”

 

“No way!” I laughed.

 

My grandmother was miffed, according to my aunt. She wanted to save her sons from a criminal justice system she believed was even more corrupt than her sons.  A generation later my father was the one in our family who would get my teenage brother out of jail while my mother argued that he should pay the consequences for his actions.

 

Seeing Jack sentenced next week will feel to many like seeing a beloved son, a big brother, a favorite uncle going under, felled by “The Man.”.  For me, it will be like watching the community pimp finally taken off the streets.  Without his arrest, he would have continued to exert influence through his wife on the County Council. His bad behavior would have continued – to the detriment of the community he claimed to serve.

 

My grandmother put it aptly when she said, “You got kids out there starving and she’s walking around with all that money in her butt!”

 

The $80,000 Jack told his wife to stuff in her panties could have gone a long way at a food pantry – if community service really was his mission. He was not shaking down wealthy developers to prosper the community – but his community loved him. Or simply looked the other way as we tend to do with our sons.

 

I asked friends on facebook whether they would surrender their son to law enforcement.  Their answers were as conflicted as my family’s – as conflicted as any random group polled in the County, perhaps. Karen said, “Hmm. I always tell my kids if they do something they will face the repercussions of their actions.” I laughed out loud at the comment from LaShawn, my BFF since childhood. “I’m with the grandfather, he’s upstairs in the top bunk! There are consequences to everything that we do or do not do.” Monique’s response was most heartfelt: “My love for my kids is unconditional, but I am certainly teaching them to be accountable for their actions. It’s a tough question to answer because it would depend on the circumstances. If my son was guilty, I would encourage him to turn himself in, help him get the best legal representation he could and be there for support.” Monique added, “I don’t envy any parent in that situation.”

Crass Commercialization

Posted on by sonsyrea


Of course Princeton Professor Cornel West came to mind as I browsed through my neighborhood market place this week. I was amused by the Halloween-Thanksgiving-Christmas competition for our dollars. I started in Dollar Tree, where I noticed plastic Christmas wreaths, cheap ornaments, and colorful Christmas ribbon next to Thanksgiving paper plates, napkins, and cups. In front of them were two bays of Halloween candy and decorations.

“What do you think about pushing all these holidays at once?” I asked the store clerk.

“It doesn’t bother me,” she said. “I won’t get trick-or-treaters at home. On Thanksgiving, I’ll go to my sister’s house for dinner; and on Christmas, we’ll go to our mom’s. The billion-dollar marketing blitzes underway to wrest our wallets and wring them dry will not persuade her. Another woman in the store agreed. “If I don’t need it, I won’t buy it,” Sharon said confidently. I was not there to argue the merits of great marketing or the tricks used to compel us to treat ourselves into brand new levels of debt by the new year. I went out to simply observe this uniquely American phenomenon. This week I can stand in the store and be wished a Happy-Halloween-Thanksgiving-and-Christmas.

I had not paid much attention to this triple, uh, treat, before now. Right now, I have a lot of time on my hands, so I am paying attention to a lot of things I had overlooked in the rush-rush of busier days. I wandered on over to the liquor store looking for signs of the holidays. A skull and bones character was perched at a wine display front and center.

“No Christmas gear?” I asked Cody, the cashier. He shook his head. He wishes Christmas was kept more sacred. He would rather not see Christmas trees in September. But! When pressed, he showed me their Christmas gift boxes stacked in a corner. “We’re putting out Crown Royal gift sets because people get liquor give sets as gifts,” he explained. They will be on display right after Halloween.

Over the years I had grown accustomed to complaints about the commercialization of Christmas. We thought things were bad when Christmas became the biggest shopping season of the year; got real mad when that season was pushed back to begin before we finished cleaning our Thanksgiving plates. I was sure that since we’re now marketing Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas at once there would be a groundswell of criticism against it – possibly led by Cornel West. (But he’s busy these days fending off critics of his latest venture – you know, the one he’s undertaken with Tavis Smiley, and getting arrested protesting against corporate greed in the Occupy protests.)

I roamed over to K-Mart and found the crass commercializing West rails against on full display – but I didn’t mind. I know many individuals are taking advantage of the extra shopping time to choose more thoughtful gifts. Some are putting gifts on lay-away, avoiding holiday debt. And many will take advantage of the early holiday offerings and fill holiday care packages their church will donate to less fortunate families in time for the holidays. There’s always an upside, right?

Outside K-Mart, racks of Halloween costumes twisted in the light winds. Inside I couldn’t help but laugh noticing the bank of Halloween cards next to the Thanksgiving greetings. A few feet away, I spotted large red, green, gold and silver Christmas bows decorating a cart of gift box colognes. But this visit got better. Not far from the cologne cart, wa-la! Christmas country! A dozen fully dressed Christmas trees stood on fake snow. Surrounding them, waist-high Dora the Explorer dolls and Sponge Bob Square pants leaned forward offering ribbon-tied Christmas gifts. Two Santas stood atop shelves full of Halloween costumes. A trail of plastic jack-o-lanterns stretched down the isles could have knocked Santa over if someone set them in motion. Yep. We’ve become a market-driven society, all right. But knowing is half the battle, right?

This year I will not spend $1,000 on Christmas gifts – not even $200. I plan to enjoy all the commercial sounds and sights, the chills and thrills of these holiday seasons without feeling compelled to fork over my cash or credit cards for the treats. I’m glad the ads were out earlier this year. They gave me time to prepare to spend less.