T A B L E__T A L K Why is a house considered a good investment? Discuss the risks of the real estate market in the Business and Personal Finance area of Table Talk ___________________ Visit BarnesandNoble.com for more books by Bill McKibben ___________________ R E C E N T L Y Exxon-Mobil: Bigger than Monica? By Heather Chaplin While the media and Congress blather about the Clinton sex scandal, these former competitors just created the biggest corporation in the world (12/04/98) The last hurrah for West Coast finance By Kevin Kelleher The departure of the last of the titans from San Francisco's biggest investment bank was marked by a disastrous frat party that time forgot (11/25/98) My guilty secret By Heather Chaplin Some people buy porn; I like to buy make-up -- in private (11/20/98) Halloween's hollow spree By Heather Chaplin How the season of candy-eating kiddies has become monstrously lucrative (11/06/98) The greatest gambling hall on earth By Heather Chaplin A view of the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (10/23/98) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Money archives S A L O N E M P O R I U M FREE! 12-ounce bag of Salon Blend with a purchase of $30 or more. While supplies last.		god rest ye, merry shoppers   Author Bill McKibben preaches a "Hundred Dollar Holiday." HUNDRED DOLLAR HOLIDAY: THE CASE FOR A MORE JOYFUL CHRISTMAS BY BILL McKIBBEN SIMON & SCHUSTER, 96 PAGES BY FIONA MORGAN In the midst of holiday madness, as Americans spend more time in shopping malls than they do with their families, author Bill McKibben has offered a modest proposal: Spend only $100 on Christmas, and instead of shopping, spend time with the people you love. Is he nuts? A modern-day Scrooge with a vendetta against credit card companies and toy manufacturers -- or maybe kids? Actually, McKibben is the author of "The End of Nature," a former staff writer for the New Yorker, and a longtime environmental journalist who is not without his critics. He's most often called "preachy." In his recent book "Maybe One," he advocated one-child family planning with a litany of gloomy environmental facts about overpopulation, citing his own decision to have one child as the best spiritual and environmental choice. Walter Kirn of New York magazine said of "Hundred Dollar Holiday" that McKibben "makes a book where a bumper sticker would do," and derides him as "sanctimonious." But McKibben may be on to something. According to the Center for a New American Dream in Washington, D.C., 47 percent of Americans went into debt last Christmas, and of those, one-fifth were still paying off that debt as of November. All this spending fails to create the spirit of joy that Christmas is supposed to evoke: Only 28 percent of those surveyed said the holidays left them feeling joyful, the center found. It hasn't always been this way. "Hundred Dollar Holiday" contains a digest of Christmas traditions, from pagan holidays of fresh meat and drunken debauchery to medieval times, when serfs would roam the hallways of the rich, singing wassail songs, demanding food and token gifts from their lords. Christmas as we know it began with the commercial canonization of Santa Claus, as he emerged in the 1823 poem "A Visit From St. Nicholas" by Clement Clarke Moore. F.W. Woolworth and other 19th century retailers adopted the jolly character Moore created, and thus began the cycle. But now, in an era where material goods are bountiful but quality time is not, McKibben argues that the way to put novelty and peace of mind back into Christmas is to limit our gift-giving and establish new traditions. McKibben spoke to Salon by phone from his home in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York. How do family and friends respond to the "Hundred Dollar Holiday" idea? In fact, most family and friends, most people are really open to the idea and love it, whatever the first year suggestion is. For instance, let's everybody pick one name out of a hat and give a present to that person. People are very responsive. You meet very few people who think that the way we do Christmas at the moment is exactly the way it should be. You shouldn't devote a 12th or a 24th of every year to something that you're really not enjoying. It's not that hard to make this a really enjoyable, really peaceful time. It should be an island of peace in the middle of a hectic year. It shouldn't be an island of extra busy-ness in the middle of an already busy year. N E X T+P A G E | Isn't Christmas all about getting stuff?