I normally like to set up my data source something like the following if I am going to be populating drop-down boxes:
<Config>
<Months>
<Month value="1" name="January"/>
<Month value="2" name="February"/>
. . .
<Month value="12" name="December"/>
</Months>
<SomethingElse>
<Whatever value="abc" name="def"/>
. . .
<Whatever value="uvw" name="xyz"/>
</SomethingElse>
</Config>