Letter from the Editor: December '07.

Letter from the Editor: December '07

Holiday on Ice

I once worked at a magazine where, to prepare the December issue, the editor asked her staff to submit wish lists for a feature called "I Want, I Want!" The lists were overflowing with Bulgari bracelets, Teuscher chocolates, and Thierry Mugler leather jackets (it was the '80s), and we one-upped each other with impossible extravagances (a private car on the Orient Express! A waltz with Baryshnikov!). As things started spinning out of control, the story was killed, and we were left with our unrequited fantasies and a corporate gift (a decorative tin of mulling spices). We all felt a little embarrassed by our outpouring of greed -- I certainly did. The story's demise seemed to me to be a rebuke for wanting so much. I've never felt comfortable asking for anything, especially if that thing came in a box with a ribbon. To say "I want" and follow it up with a list of glittering objects is just too presumptuous. Not that I don't covet things, Heaven knows. It's the list-making that unnerves me. In fact,

I secretly hope that someone will read my mind and figure out exactly what it is I want before it even occurs to me. This is a trap, even though I don't mean it to be. Given my behavior,

I ...