I've always been disconcerted by the sight of red-cheeked Santa and red-nosed Rudolph displayed next to pale vampires and green witches, so no matter what retailers have to say, I refuse to accept that the holiday season begins before Halloween.

But now it's November and I expect that at some point in the middle of the night, all evidence of Halloween was moved aside to make way for Thanksgiving- and Christmas-themed items, which will delight my daughter, who bought her Halloween costume in September and has been eager to move on to the gift-giving days ever since.

This year, my material girl surprised me. She's always been a giver, although at age 6, she's never been much concerned about who owns the items she's giving away, or what value they might have. I've graciously accepted extravagant gifts like my mother's wristwatch (and returned it to its rightful owner) and just recently stopped her before she generously distributed items from a box of mementos I've been holding on to since I was about my son's age, persuading her instead to give away original pieces of her artwork.

Since she doesn't share my reservations about mixing up holidays, she started watching the new Veggie-Tales DVD "Saint Nicholas: A Story of Joyful Giving" when it came out a few weeks ago. The main video explains all the mythology surrounding Santa Claus, with a serious lesson about anonymous giving woven in with typical VeggieTales silliness when the story doesn't match up to the story about the jolly old elf who lives in the North Pole and delivers toys on demand.

What really drove home the lesson for my daughter was information about Operation Christmas Child, which sends shoeboxes full of gifts to children in need. My daughter and I are currently locked in an ongoing debate about where to send boxes — I point out that there are people in need in Hawaii, she frets about the people featured in the video who don't have anything — but I have no problem with helping her fill shoeboxes, especially since she has decided that it's a good use of her Christmas fund, which she could have used on herself.

It's a good lesson for a little girl who likes to shop for toys and periodically give the excess to charity because — like Larry the Cucumber in the VeggieTales video — she's learning that it's not about toys. She can pick little toys, of course, but the shoebox project requires her to really think about some of the things she takes for granted: pencils and notebooks or toothpaste and soap. While she's been known to hide hairbrushes to avoid getting her hair detangled, she's going to discover that a brush might be a luxury for some children.

It's different from shopping for Toys for Tots (practically the only holiday shopping I really enjoy doing with the kids), because while it's good to think about what kind of toy might make a child really happy, it's so much more important to think about what children need to survive.

When she's not being a journalist, Treena Shapiro is busy with her real job, raising a son and daughter. Check out her blog at www.HonoluluAdvertiser.com/Blogs.