I am fairly certain that I was the only 5th grader at Rohoic Elementary who both owned Guns-n-Roses' Appetite for Destruction and still believed in Santa Claus. I suppose I can credit both Judy Blume and Mrs. Hume for tag-teaming my fragile and trusting mindscape. After recess one afternoon, Mrs. Hume read a chapter from Blume's Superfudge, the one in which Peter, the main character, spills the beans on Santa's imaginary existence. Fuming, I stomped into the house after school that day and gave my mother hell for stringing me along for so long. But, most of all, I was genuinely heartbroken that one of the coolest, most generous, and most magical people I knew did not exist. Of course, this did not indefinitely snuff my holiday fever, but, in retrospect, it is unquestionably the first time I felt the ebbing of holiday abandon.

You see, when I was a little girl, the holiday season was an unrivaled time of enchantment, a time when my otherwise antagonistic family tucked away their warfare and very weirdly morphed into one worthy of its own endearing, saccharine sit-com. As our Christmas tree was erected, so were truces and cease-fires in our little spiced-with-dysfunction world. The two weeks of winter break from school were a condensed, celebrational blur of tree-trimming, holiday cartoon and movie specials, cooking baking and decorating, and impromptu craft frenzies (once, in a moment of genius that surely pleased the Reduce-Reuse-Recycle goddesses, my two sisters and I painted empty cardboard toilet paper tubes to look like toy soldiers-a decoration my mother still displays either out of pride or in effort to embarrass us). On Christmas Eve, the three of us, feeding off of each other's excitement and anticipation, would pile into one of our beds, an act ensuring that one wouldn't sneak a peek at the Christmas loot before the other two. The festivities were heartfelt and fabulous.

In my adulthood, however, I suffer through this time of year with a holiday spirit of the bipolar sort. In one second flat, my mental terrain can shift from chez Griswold to chez Grinch, my inclinations from decking the halls to decking somebody. These emotional extremities stem from my failing attempts to reconcile my blissful childhood holiday memories (sans the Santa disillusion, of course) with those regrettable ones of my adulthood. Now that we're older and geographically farther apart, the traditions and spontaneous creativity that propelled my family through the holiday seasons have faded, and all that is left is the fiendish orgy of consumerism that makes me want to shrug the whole thing off for good. I mean, if a seizure-inducing trampling over a $29 DVD player at a Wal-Mart SuperCenter doesn't deflate your holiday spirit, you must be vacationing in Whoville. Yes, the materialistic drive of the season overwhelms me, but the lack of awareness (or lack of desire for awareness, more precisely) of more socially-conscious and earth-considerate gifts downright discourages and distresses me.

And then Adbusters comes along and reminds me that my plight is not a solitary one.

Apparently, those with similar sentiments in over 65 countries celebrated Adbusters' Buy Nothing Day 2003. This holiday season marks the tenth year Adbusters has sponsored this anti-consumerist jubilee that asks folks to question consumption and refrain from spending one day during the flurry of holiday shopping. In the United States and Canada, Buy Nothing Day (BND) is observed on Black Friday, the day following the American Thanksgiving; in the UK this year it was noted on November 29. From China to the USA, this year's BND was a blooming success that included jams, Zen Santas, DIY gift-making sessions, clever mascots, innovative demonstrations and even radio and televisions adverts, according to adbusters.org.

But it's blind consumption‹not the actual act of shopping‹that BND participants wish to curb. So many of the products currently available are manufactured with unreserved disregard for their impact on the environment and human quality of life. More and more, companies are benefiting from production in developing countries where labor is cheap and fair labor standards are absent. And increasingly, these products are made in ways that waste nonrenewable resources, pollute the air and waterways, and devastate wildlife. Our society relishes convenience and bargains and these come at a destructive expense that we all-too-often do not see.

As far as kind consumption goes, Adbusters offers this brief checklist to help you on your way:

Do I need it?
How many do I already have?
How much will I use it?
How long will it last?
Could I borrow it from a friend or family member?
Can I do without it?
Am I able to clean and/or maintain it myself?
Am I willing to?
Will I be able to repair it?
Have I researched it to get the best quality for the best price?
How will I dispose of it when I'm done with it?
Are the resources that went into it renewable or nonrenewable?
Is it made with recycled materials, and is it recyclable?
Is there anything I already own that I substitute for it?

So, if you didn't participate in this year's Buy Nothing Day, you can still make your holiday season a kind and socially responsible one. Some folks are even celebrating a Buy Nothing Christmas. This year I've done my best to pare down my holiday costs by investing a bit more elbow grease than benjamins into my gifts. You can't go wrong with homemade food and DIY trinkets. I wish I could tell you about my holiday goodies (because I'm so stoked about Śem!), but I don't want to spoil the surprise for those family members who may feel so inclined to read this (Jenny Hart at sublimestitching.com, you rock!).

What is more centering and inspiring, however are the gifts of time and fun. I am doing my part to revive tradition in my family and I am even in the process of starting a new oneŠ More on that later. I hope this finds you and yours enjoying a rockin' good holiday. Be safe.

We at Jaded Times would like to apologize to Rhianna for losing our last 2003 issue to the server gods and thus printing this a bit late for everyone. Some good tips for next year, however...