A Christmas list shouldn't be too specific. Santa needs some wiggle room. And adding the suggested retail price to every item on the list seems presumptuous to me. But my teenage daughter doesn't leave much to chance. "Stick to the list," is what she told Mrs. Claus and myself the other day when she presented us with the directions. I was "this" close to putting the list in an envelope and sending it to the South Pole.

But Mrs. Claus prevailed on me to put some holiday cheer into my attitude. So I donned my 3-D glasses to read the list, hoping that my high-tech eye wear would somehow keep the hot pink ink from jumping off the page and attacking my wallet. Those glasses worked just fine when I was watching Creature from the Black Lagoon the other night. I spotted the zipper on the creature's wet suit right away. But the glasses failed miserably in holding down the wishes on my daughter's Christmas list. It's a wonder there wasn't a $100 printer cartridge on the list, and a shame that you can't get one that prints only in pink, because that seems to be the only color that is required.

You may have gathered by now that my daughter is on a pink thing. Everything she wishes for is pink. She wants pink high-heeled sneakers, pink handbags, pink lip gloss, and a pink car. There aren't many pink cars to choose from because most people don't have the one-track mind required to drive one. So I guess a pink car is going to have to be special order.

If I liked pink better, this might be easier to grasp. But I've always preferred blue. This is a boy-girl thing that starts in the womb, which is painted pink if the baby is going to be a girl and blue if it is going to be a boy. After that, your color preferences are set for the next eighty years. So it's not my daughter's fault that she likes pink so much.

I blame this all on a culture that is becoming more divorced from nature all the time. Blue, you can find anywhere. It's in the sky and the water, just about every place you look. But have you ever seen pink snow? I think pink is a color made up by some marketing whiz who wanted to sell more high-heeled sneakers to teenage girls. Or maybe it was Barbie and that pink Corvette that got us rocketing down the road to pink oblivion. In fact, I think it was Barbie who issued the first pink slip. Sorry Ken. Guess those pinking shears didn't treat your hair right after all.

If pink is really meant to be the color of Christmas this year, I think Rudolph will have a slightly different nose. With a pink nose, I'll trust Rudolf to cut through the gloom and lead me to all the things on my daughter's Christmas list. Then I'll relax by the fire and listen to some real Christmas music. None of that "Blue Christmas" stuff for me this year (sorry Elvis). I'm dreaming of a pink Christmas.