To the surprise of no one, I own this book.

It's another lovefest for all things retro. And it got me thinking, the attraction to retro has more to it than mere nostalgia, in my opinion.

I think a good number of us want to return to a day before Christmas dinnerware, before we felt pressure to choose the "perfect holiday wine" and create culinary masterpieces and update our damn decorating every year.

I remember when holidays were comfortingly similar every year. Every family had its specialties, and they brought it to Christmas. My aunt, for example, was the Italian queen and brought some sort of pasta bake with sausage or meatballs every year. My grandma brought pierogies and rosettes. My great-aunt brought potato pancakes and roast beef in gravy. My mom brought salad, salmon ball, and this horrid yogurt-Cool Whip-fruit thing that everyone under 18 loved and everyone over 18 hated.

Who decided that a Santa sheet cake and non-gourmet coffee wasn't good enough anymore? What's wrong with potato chips and onion dip? Where did all the styrofoam cups go?

Christmas has become just like bachelor parties, weddings, children's birthdays and everything else that have become less a celebration than a never-ending quest to out-do the previous year's extravaganza.

And why? To pretend we're rich and cultured? Listen, I don't know about any of the rest of you, but I have a roof over my head and I've never gone to bed cold or hungry. I turn a knob and I get clean water. I can take a bath every day. I'm already rich. The rest of that stuff is crap and bullshit.

I realize that I make fun of "white trash" people a lot, but in reality, I admire their lack of pretense; they know what they like, and they eat it, drink it, wear it. Likewise, some people truly do enjoy haute cuisine and know their wines. Good for them. I am comfortably in the middle, and I will stay here despite the best efforts of the marketing machine to make me feel bad about it.