By Patricia Gallagher Newberry
Enquirer contributor

A while back, I used excerpts from my daily calendar in lieu of a real Christmas letter. No time to write, I chirped, as I shipped out my version of Diary of a Mad Housewife to friends and family.

Three years later and still no time to write - or shop or decorate or wrap or even contemplate the reason for the season.

Reduce and remove, the experts on stress-free holidays suggest. Savor the salient and simplify, they instruct.

OK, I'm game. But remove what? Simplify where?

Maybe I could start with gifts for the kids. Bea really doesn't need a Make-Up Mirror and Vanity; A.J. can keep using the "family scooter"; and Fran will forget she wanted a personal CD player. Come Christmas morning, they can just revel in each other's company instead of their new holiday loot.

My husband probably won't care if I skip presents for him, too. I could wrap his gift list with a credit card and tell him to hit the after-holiday sales.

Yeah, that might work. Gift certificates for everyone else on the shopping list, too.

Delay birthday parties?

Perhaps I could postpone the birthday celebrations this year, as well. Even though the two oldest get another year older in December, I'm sure they wouldn't mind waiting until February for a cake and presents. (Tip to future parents: Don't procreate in March.)

And forget the tree. Why spend hours putting up an ever-thirsty evergreen that drops a few dozen needles if someone so much as sneezes in the next room? We'll spend that $35 to take the family out for a holiday pizza instead.

Without a tree, it will be easy to justify a downgrade in Christmas decorating. Whew! We can just cart all those boxes strewn about the living room right back up to the attic where they belong.

With a scaled-back Christmas we can forgo the holiday baking, the visit to Santa, the trip to Krohn Conservatory and the trip downtown to see the trains.

Maybe I'll even forget the cards this year. I mean, who needs a long-winded letter from a friend or relative during the holiday rush, anyway? Who, really, needs any of the stress-making, bank-breaking accouterments of Christmas at all?

Well, me, for one! And my husband, a man with a 58 Christmas-CD collection, for two. And our kids for three, four and five.

Start earlier?

We like Christmas. We like it all. We like to shop for gifts and put up a tree and put out my Santa collection and send a long Christmas letter and bake a few cookies and squeeze in a few viewings of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas and It's a Wonderful Life.

But we - OK, make that me - don't like having to do it all in a few short weeks.

Oh, yes, I could start a lot earlier, in July maybe. I could eliminate a few nonessentials, like the baking. I could reduce the card count by half and not hear a complaint. I could skip the parties and church events and school gatherings. I could stop dreaming of the great handmade gifts I'd be making if only I didn't have 60 exams to grade a week before the holiday.

Over the years, I've tried all those strategies. But each time I drop one Christmas task or tradition I seem to add another.

Yes, I want a Jimmy Stewart/Bing Crosby/Martha Stewart Christmas for myself and my family. I want a festive house and a mood to match. I want to give great gifts and get a few in return.

Yes, I know I stress myself out by buying into the whole commercial ball of wax that Christmas has become.

Yes, I know I don't have to string the tree, shop till I drop and burn the Christmas candle at both ends to mark the birth of Christ.

But I just don't enjoy it any other way.

E-mail newgal@marriedwchildren.com