When my brother and sister sent me my niblings’ Christmas lists this year – instruction manuals to keep this out-of-state, out-of-touch aunt on a four- and 11-year-old’s nice list – I read them with conflicting warmth and consumerist guilt. It doesn’t seem like all that long ago that I produced a wish list that was probably strikingly similar: toys designed to set adults’ teeth on edge, video games, bits of plastic that I would have adored for an hour then sent to rot in landfill for the next 5000 years. I’m no Grinch, though (at least not to a four-year-old’s face), so I dutifully loaded up my cart, covered my eyes before I saw the total cost, and hit “purchase”.

Because I’m the youngest and most scattered sibling, my family indulges me more than I probably deserve. Soon it was time to send back a wish list for my own dependent: my Samoyed, Heidi. But when I sat down to write it for her – no thumbs, see? – she proved a little trickier to shop for. Given her way, Heidi would request from Santa an endless sunny afternoon at the park, the undivided attention of her girlfriend, a golden retriever named Harriet,........

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