Farm & Ranch Guide: North Dakota's Ag Newspaper

It’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas even if it doesn’t look like Christmas here at Sims. The hills are as bare and brown as they normally look during a mid-summer drought, but it is cold enough to feel like Christmas.

We don’t see many Christmas decorations around Sims but you don’t have to go very far to see Christmas lights and decorations. Stores in the towns fairly glow with decorations that remind us of our obligation to buy gifts for our friends and relatives.

Christmas catalogs are arriving in the mailbox almost every day.

I made a rare visit to a shopping mall yesterday to buy a couple items I needed for myself. It is rare for me to shop somewhere where you can’t buy baler twine, chore gloves, or furnace filters, but now and then I find it necessary to go to the mall. Lots of people were obviously doing some Christmas shopping. I didn’t look at much of anything I didn’t need but couldn’t help but notice that there are a lot of pricey items out there for the public to buy.

It seems like people don’t use common sense when it comes to Christmas shopping. I hear a lot about credit card debt, and it is easy to believe when you see people flashing their cards at the checkout counter. Many people seem to think that only an expensive gift is a worthy one. I think it is ridiculous to spend more than you can afford so I guarantee you I won’t buy a single item with my credit card. Perhaps that is why my family opens gifts from me first, and saves the best ones for last.

I did notice a couple teenage girls that must have been trying to minimize their spending, but the police had them both handcuffed out in the street in front of the mall.

As I looked at all of the items people were buying, I couldn’t help but think that the money would have been better spent if they had given their loved ones cash before Christmas with the specification that they had to walk around town and drop it into those little red pots by the bell ringer.

My thoughts were not limited to excessive Christmas spending. I have bigger things to worry about. Last year the Missus proclaimed we would all buy our gifts in thrift stores. This year she announced we would all make our gifts. She seemed to have failed to understand that some of us are not very creative. I can’t bake, sew, braid, draw, tool leather, make knives, or weld very well. I can do some carpentry work but there is only so much you can do with a chain saw and an axe. Besides, the Missus hates it when I am sitting in the basement gunning my chain saw, trying to get some inspiration about what to build.

I still can’t imagine what type of Christmas presents I will be able to make, but rest assured, I will encourage my family to remember that it is not the gift, but the thought that counts.

I stopped at a service station for a minute and then called the Missus as I drove home. I told her I had found a $20 bill in an ATM machine and asked her what she would have done with it.

“Well”, she said, “I would have taken it to the counter and given it to the clerk in case someone counted their money, found they hadn’t gotten all the money, and came back to claim it.”

“That’s what I did, although I’ll admit I did it somewhat reluctantly,” I told the Missus. “I may have made better use of it, had I saved it until I could have dropped it into one of those red pots, but I like the idea of someone actually coming back to the convenience store and retrieving the money they had overlooked.”

One thing is for sure. Someone got a gift!

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