You can call me crazy, or even obsessive-compulsive, but I have always been a collector of things. When I was a kid, I collected pogs. If you don't know what those are, don't ask...but just know that I had some awesome slammers. My urge to collect things escalated and took years to come down when I discovered the joy of Christmas shirts. There were literally thousands of different designs on the Internet, and I would never be able to own all of them. They were the perfect collectable.

When I get an idea in my head like this, I really take the ball and run with it. Not only to I try to get a touchdown, but I run that ball right out of the park like a modern day Forrest Gump. I felt like the whole college scene was way too dominated by what people wore and how they looked. I wanted to prove that you could wear something completely lame and still manage to have friends and dates. Before I knew it, I had around 15 of these Christmas t-shirts with Santas and snow and all kinds of ridiculous crap.

All of my weirdness paid off for me, though. One night I ended up in a long conversation with this extremely good looking girl who made my heart slam against my ribcage. I'm not talking about the kind of attraction that leads to a bedroom for a night and then a lifetime of awkward glances at the bar. I'm talking about love. This girl was smart, provocative, and sly. She was a challenge, and I loved that we spent the whole night fencing with our words. My stupid Christmas shirts never even came up in the conversation.

After we hung out a couple more times and started talking on the phone every night, our attraction turned into a pretty great relationship within just a few short weeks. Those weeks were a blur, I was so incredibly happy. We moved in together after about five months and the whole thing got even better. It wasn't until I caught her giving me a look of utmost displeasure one night out of the corner of my eye as I was putting on one of my Christmas shirts that I knew that everything wasn't perfect. She didn't mean to let me see that look, but I knew that the shirts were getting on her nerves.

It was definitely time to get rid of all of these clothes that had been clogging up my closet for the last three years. I literally had around a hundred of the things. I had no idea how bad my obsession had gotten. I went to my sweetheart and told her that I wanted to give them to charity. Throwing them all away seemed like such a waste. We loaded them up and took them to a shelter for people living on the streets, and I felt a whole lot better about myself when we were done.

After a few months, I had almost forgot about being the "Christmas guy". A couple of more months passed, and the actual Holiday in question was here. The one day a year when it would have been okay to wear those Christmas t-shirts and I didn't have any to put on. We decided to visit that same mission where my shirts were donated in order to help feed the homeless on Christmas Eve. That would never had occurred to me, but my girlfriend is a gentle soul and helping people was second nature to her. When we walked through the door, however, the whole world slowed down. There were so many people wearing the Christmas clothes I had given up that I was dumbfounded by the festive nature of it all. I felt a tear on my cheek and my girl gave my hand a squeeze. I finally knew what this whole Christmas thing should have been about all along.