How many of you drive yourselves crazy every year trying to have a Martha Stewart's Christmas? You know who you are. And you know as hard as you try you're never able to achieve it. It always turns out to be an Erma Bombeck Christmas doesn't it?

I have a letter here that Martha Stewart sent to Erma Bombeck.

Hi Erma,

This perfectly delightful note is being sent on paper I made myself to tell you what I have been up to. Since it snowed last night, I got up early and made a sled with old barn wood and a glue gun. I hand painted it in gold leaf, got out my loom, and made a blanket in peaches and mauves. Then to make the sled complete, I made a white horse to pull it, from DNA molecules that I had just sitting around in my craft room.

By then, it was time to start making the place mats and napkins for my 20 breakfast guests. I'm serving the old standard Stewart twelve-course breakfast, but I'll let you in on a little secret: I didn't have time to make the tables and chairs this morning, so I used the ones I had on hand.

Before I moved the table into the dining room, I decided to add just a touch of the holidays. So I repainted the room in pinks and stenciled gold stars on the ceiling. Then, while the homemade bread was rising, I took antique candle molds and made the dishes (exactly the same shade of pink) to use for breakfast. These were made from Hungarian clay, which you can get at almost any Hungarian craft store.

Well, I must run. I need to finish the buttonholes on the dress I'm wearing for breakfast. I'll get out the sled and drive this note to the post office as soon as the glue dries on the envelope I'll be making. Hope my breakfast guests don't stay too long, I have 40,000 cranberries to string with bay leaves before my speaking engagement at noon.

Love, Martha Stewart

P.S. When I made the ribbon for this typewriter, I used 1/8-inch gold gauze. I soaked the gauze in a mixture of white grapes and blackberries which I grew, picked, and crushed last week just for fun.

Here is Erma Bombeck's reply: Dear Martha, I'm writing this on the back of an old shopping list, pay no attention to the coffee and jelly stains. I'm 20 minutes late getting my daughter up for school, packing a lunch with one hand, and holding the phone with the other. I'm on hold with the dog pound, seems old Ruff needs bailing out again. Burnt my arm on the curling iron when I was trying to make those cute curly fries, HOW do they do that? Still can't find the scissors to cut out some snowflakes, tried using an old disposable razor...trashed the tablecloth. Tried that cranberry thing, frozen cranberries mashed up after I defrosted them in the microwave. Oh, and don't use Fruity Pebbles as a substitute in that Rice Krispie snowball recipe, unless you happen to like a disgusting shade that resembles puke! The smoke alarm is going off, talk to ya' later.

Love, Erma

Who here is not guilty of trying to have a Martha Stewart Christmas? None of us. "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire," who of us has ever roasted Chestnuts on an open fire? "Dashing through the snow, on a one horse opensleigh." I was 27 years old before I understood they were singing "One horse open sleigh." Up till then I had mumbled those words. We don't have sleighs in Memphis. Last sleigh I owned I was 10 years old. I remember using it once and it came to a grinding halt every ten feet due to the exposure of asphalt.

So much of what we do during this season, if you read the scriptures with more than a cursory glance, is strikingly foreign to that first Christmas.