Just when I thought my aversion to the holiday season had become more of a tradition or a habit than an actual reaction to the two month period when Santa and his gaudy merriment barf all over the retail world, I did something to cement my Scrooge stance for 2009.

I put linens on my Christmas list.

For starters, why? Nothing in life could interest me less than textiles, interior decorating, or any of the offerings that tend to occupy the third floor of department stores. I already own a bed, and it pretty consistently rocks the holy trilogy of a sheet, pillow and a blanket, so why the need for an upgrade? My bed is not widely visited except by the occasional hammered friend, and if my friends were conscious for any of their stays, I imagine their delight to not be squished into the fetal position on my love seat would exceed any discomfort caused by the low thread count of my Kmart sheets.

Most of the time my bed is half filled with items that have nothing to do with sleep at all. Books, crossword puzzles, vetoed clothing choices from that morning – I routinely lose things and realize several days later that I have actually been spooning them the entire time (Glasses Case, you dog!) Recently a friend of mine (who shall remain nameless but is tagged in this note), decided to crash at my place after a night of heavy drinking in my neighborhood; when she arrived at my house and started haphazardly pulling shit off my bed in the dark in an attempt to clear a space for herself next to me, she actually threw an entire bag of Target groceries to my floor. I still haven’t decided who should be more embarrassed by that story.

The point is, I would sleep soundly in my cluttered bed no matter how color coordinated the pillow cases and despite the absence of a sham (sham is one of my new vocabulary words, so named I assume because you are paying money for a pillow of a useless size that will inevitably be kicked to the floor). So why I decided to subject my sweet mother to a bedding treasure hunt on the busiest shopping weekend of the year with no guidance besides, “I dunno, I feel like it’s time for me to have a more grown-up bed,” is beyond me.

Have you ever tried to go shopping at Macy’s the day after Thanksgiving? It’s very much like the chaotic street market scenes in Aladdin. I should have just grabbed a sheet set and darted between holiday shoppers, swung from curtain displays and bounded over toppled stacks of home décor with my mother, Apu, and avoided the lines altogether. We did manage to find two new pillows and a comforter for me in this hell hole, but we had to retreat to the car for ten minutes and eat a snack before we could get ourselves to go back inside.

I wish I could say this was the low point, but we actually reached that milestone when after failing to find an acceptable cover for my new comforter at maybe our fourth store, my mother, who is very funny as it turns out, gently chided,

“Why are you trying to class up your bed anyway? Got someone to impress?”

No. No I do not. But thank you MOM for bringing to my attention the futility of our efforts.

I won’t bore you with a detailed account of all the lessons I’ve learned about linens over the last few days, but I will say that they culminate in my surprising discovery that it is in fact possible to miss a time in my life when every night for ten months was spent in a sleeping bag.

Actually, I will share just one lesson, in case you are game for a challenge and reading this has inspired you to run off and shop for new linens of your own: it is impossible to buy what I have recently learned is called a “duvet cover” at a department store in Hayward, CA, unless you don’t mind that your “duvet cover” be the stiff, scratchy consistency of the hotel bed covers that research shows are swimming with inordinate amounts of semen.

Happy holidays!