I have yet another thought--you have really hit home hard, Willie-O, because you bring up something that no one else really has--and that is not the obsession to get presents, or the great commercialization of Christmas--it is our need to give--

I didn't notice one person on this list who talked about the material things that they wanted, everyone talked about giving--

We are obsessed with giving--the business world just plays into it--the kids just play into it--

I have an old book somewhere, a book called "The Real Diary of a Real Boy" by Harry Shute--it was written before the turn of the century, in a small town in Hew Hampshire--he talks about Christmas and how he got a pocket knife and an orange and a new pair of socks, or something, he felt like he had done real well.

The expectations have increased because we all have fostered them by giving compusively--encouraging kids and others to have increased expectations, and then killing ourselves trying to fullfill them--

Even those of you who are doing charitable things our living out the urge to give--do your homeless need only at christmas? Do the shut-ins and institutionalixed need songs and stories only at Christmas?---I venture not, but you, like me, feel a strong need to give of yourself at this time--

Willie-O, I am disabled, I received a traumatic brain injury in a peculiar accident, about twelve years ago, and suffered some permanent neurological damage--I can still do work, but not on the kind of schedule that jobs demand--I can still play my instrument, but I have some motor and cognitive impairments that create unexpecte obstacles, so I don't play out much anymore--

The thing is that, like you, I feel a need inside of me to give--though no one is asking me for anything--and, since I can no longer play the role, I feel very much like Checkov's "Extraneous Man"--