Ecclesiastes 12:10

  This year I’m not asking for much. We’re going to tone things back. Just get me a nice pair of socks. You know the fancy kind with lots of patterns. Maybe more than one set. And it would be nice if I got a sweater as well. Oh, I could use some accessories for my truck. A new side rail, seat covers, bed liner… it might just be easier to get a new truck. A recliner might be nice. One of those movie theater ones with the electronic adjustment with the cup holder and the place to charge your phone. Well if I got a place to charge the phone, I might need a new phone as well.  But not the newest model, I’m not greedy.   Ah, the creep of materialism. Maybe we notice more this time of year but it’s a struggle we all face. In a country as blessed as ours, it’s sad that it never seems like enough. We constantly want and get more stuff, thinking it will bring us joy. And it does… for a bit. Then we see something else, someone gets something better and the pulls start over...

  J.C. and Rollie Hall ran into a problem during the 1917 holiday season: Business had been too good.   At their Kansas City, Missouri shop they ran out of the white, red, and green tissue papers that were the era’s standard gift dressing.  Poking around the shop, Rollie realized they still had a stack of fancy French paper meant for lining envelopes. On a lark, he placed the lining paper in a showcase and priced it at 10 cents a sheet. The paper sold out instantly.   The next year, the Hall brothers pressed their luck, offering the fancy paper again during the holiday season.  Again, it flew off shelves.  By 1919, the brothers had decided to print their own special paper for concealing presents, and the gift wrap business was born. Today, wrapping paper is a $3.2 billion industry, and you can still buy it by the roll at the Halls’ store, Hallmark. [i]   You can hardly imagine today a gift today not wrapped up in something fan...