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Cash-Poor at Christmas Is Not Cute
You probably have seen picturebooks that show family members giving each other little homemade tokens that thrill them at Christmas. Or rescuing a kitten that becomes the gift to everyone.
Maybe the most “American” of the holiday-stories-to-teach-you were the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. If you can overlook Ma’s comments that denigrate Native Americans — and I can’t, but I did as a child — you see people using clever country skills to craft tiny gifts that bring enormous delight.
For anyone over age four and exposed to modern advertising, those stories are now less relevant than a fairy tale.
When R and I “opted out of the rat race” and embraced rural life, we’d been reading for a while, and we intended to do what the people in the books did: raise crops and animals, trade them or modestly sell them for the items and services we needed, and “live simply so that others may simply live.” We were not alone: Scott and Helen Nearing launched a back-to-the-land movement with their books, and the magazine Mother Earth News described every rural life skill you’d ever need and how to do it all yourself.
That ambitious approach lasted just about until the first ear infection for our little son. Imagine: The doctor and pharmacy both expected to be paid. Cash. Now.
