Christmas brings Zhu zhus and no nos

I’ve always been a cultural contrarian. Call it ego, call it pure eccentricity.

When all my friends in high school were turning out for basketball, I joined the blue collar wrestling team. (I was 6’1″ and gangly and got my butt kicked…)

When my pals trooped off to college, I dropped out and headed for Europe and Asia.

If a book is on the bestseller list, I can’t read it. Two years later? Fine.

But there’s something about buzz and bubbles and hype that just leaves me cold.

Even owning a Blackberry or an iPhone reminds me a little of scenes out of Brave New World.

Weird for someone in the news business, right? But I don’t want to be that “connected.”

My latest instinctive recoil involves the “zhu zhus,” those animatronic hamsters that kids, apparently, are craving this Christmas season.

The backstory of these robotic gerbils is kind of sweet: an American Gepetto ginned them up in his St. Louis basement and now he’s a kajillionaire.

But once something goes viral, as they say these days, the sweetness turns saccharine.

Jim Silver, editor-in-chief of trade publication TimeToPlayMag.com…equates Zhu Zhu pets with the Furby and Pokemon crazes, both nearly a decade ago. Before that, Tickle Me Elmo, and once upon a time, Cabbage Patch dolls.

TimeToPlayMag? Really?

Here’s my Grinch advice to parents: If there’s one thing that every kid in America HAS to have this holiday season, it’s your job to get your kids something else.

It’s not disappointment I’m peddling. It’s a sense of avoiding the mad rush on Black Friday.

It’s a sense of using our own taste and instinct; and of avoiding (whenever possible) being marketed and sold like the consumers we are supposed to be.

The truth is, I love a big, bountiful Christmas tree as much as the next guy.

(It’s been long enough after the craze that I’m actually hoping for an iPod…how’s that for neurotic?)

But at this time of year when we all spend a little beyond our means, there’s value (right?) in looking for unique and beautiful and personal gifts…maybe even locally made.

And there’s also value in avoiding the latest version of Furby.