It’s Gift Season on Vashon. How did it happen so fast? Wasn’t it just Halloween? Suddenly there were 18 Christmas tree retail operations on the main highway, and the massive (classy, iconic) candy canes were up, and oh, right, I’m supposed to do something about presents.

We’ve gone with “Secret Santa” in various family and friend groupings. It’s easier, cheaper, adds an exciting, random element and is a nice contrast to simply getting exactly the thing you told your spouse two months ago that you wanted for Christmas, which ends up being clothing. Just sayin’.

And now, in the last minute flurry, I can’t stop looking at every sweet and tchotchke in every store and thinking: “stocking stuffers … must … buy …things.”

I do buy, and locally, dang it. And of course, like all good Islanders, I’m trying to do the Christmas gift equivalent of the anti-inflammatory diet — natural, colorful, light on beige, sugar and chemicals.

Vashon’s gift culture is even more idiosyncratic than that. It’s a very generous place, sometimes in weird ways — you just have to notice it.

Some Island gifts happen just at Christmas: The now-controversial elves are a great example! Pointy-eared North Polers (many of whom live on the north end, coincidence?) ring bells and spread cheer, under county-regulated parameters. We get a little show, the fun of a friendly intersection and a chance to fill the coffers for Vashon’s generosity.

To donate, go online and fill out a 45-page form and turn in two copies at the three designated drive-thru donation stations. Look for cones, flares, floodlights and a police escort.

Then there are the candy canes, which again, in my opinion, are works of art, some brilliant mix of pre-modern and post-modern and post-postmodern civic décor. Whoever puts those up should be mayor.

I think, in a cloyingly didactic way, that we should be really grateful for the gifts that surround us and make our way of life so rich, so rare. And if we could share this gift awareness with the world, Vashon could become a model for global healing.

Failing that, it could maybe be a profitable business, an Island-wide cottage industry, a brand with a mission: www.vashonsavestheworld.com. Hear me out.

You know the clutch of coffee cogitators at Minglemint? I don’t know what they talk about, but they’re relaxed and friendly, and they don’t give you the stink-eye, ever. I think they’re given their own special blend.

This little gem in our midst is geniality and hospitality personified. So why not invite clueless, antagonistic world political leaders out to the Island for a “peace retreat weekend” and sit them down amongst the coffee clutch for an hour or two?

They would come away sedated and blissful. Or perhaps willing to agree to anything just to get out of there. Either way, we could make a killing, so to speak.

Netanyahu, c’mon down! Ahmadinejad, get over here, buddy!

There are scores of examples like this. And since all the world’s issues are played out here on Vashon, we could set up consulting businesses for solving all of them!

Remember the Community Council saga — nobody killed each other, and we acted like grown-ups. School funding — we raised money, we didn’t blame or demonize anybody. OK, we did a little, but only a little. Take notice, DC!

How about “grinding” at high school dances — well, I actually have no idea what happened there, but I know I’m not thinking about it anymore! Morality issues, America? Bring it!

Hunting, dogs and ice cream in Island Center Forest — we managed it. (The ice cream issue hasn’t actually come up yet, but there’s a committee.) We talk to each other, for goodness sake!

In these wacky times, when you can just feel it all coming to a head, it’s good to know that here on the far reaches of the continent, it’s an auspicious Vashon Gift Season: Our Christmas expression is surprisingly, uniquely cheery, and there’s a new business trend on the horizon.

Take heed, holiday-stressed Islanders — 2012 is lookin’ up!

— Kevin Joyce is an Island writer, singer and comedian.