Joy to the World…or Not

Merry Two-Days-After-Christmas and Happy Day-After-Birthday to Chris!

Poor Chris always gets gypped when it comes to his birthday, because it just disappears into all the holiday hoopla. Both my sister and Chris’s sister had babies in December, and frankly, if I were planning to get pregnant, I’d count out the weeks and make damned sure that the birth fell nowhere near the overwhelming quicksand of anxiety and stress that is Christmas.

Christmas has become less and less important to me as I get older. I wasn’t raised to be religious, so the birth of Christ is less important to me than the birth of Christopher. And I’ve never been particularly thoughtful or skilled at selecting nice gifts for people — to me, food is everything, and it’s inconceivable to me that there can be a better present for anyone than something scrumptiously edible. Contrary to my belief, however, the average person simply does not want a potato product as a tiding of comfort and joy.

The second or third year that Chris and I were together, we tried to celebrate. We decorated the house and even filled stockings for the dogs. We bought a tree and ornaments, and hoped fervently that the dogs would not mistake the tree for an outdoor one and use it as a restroom. After that one year, though, we gave up on celebrating, because Christmas became more about driving everywhere to ensure that both sides of the family were fairly visited, than about spending quality time with loved ones. By the time we got to a destination, we were either worrying about the next stage of the journey, or stressed out from the traveling we had just completed.

Now that my family is spread out across the country, we tend to purchase gifts for each other off Amazon wish lists, or just bluntly ask the other person what he or she would like. With Chris’s family, the wish list for each person goes out directly to all members, whether or not you’ve actually requested such a list, along with demands for your own list. For extended family, we buy gifts for people simply because we are expected to do so, and not because we want to or saw something that would be just right for them.

Within the last few years, Christmas has evolved into a mostly even exchange of gifts. I get what I want, and you get what you want, and if we keep track, we’ll spend about the same amount of money on each other. (Occasionally, of course, there are the gifts that no one wants, and here I’m thinking of the black dress shirt Chris’s mother gave him last year, the one with the large embroidered flower on the back that crept from his shoulder to his waist, and the somewhat girly cashmere sweater my own mother gifted him with one year which made him resemble a slightly ill bumblebee.)

Now that this year’s celebration of excess has died down, I’d like to propose a new way of spending Christmas. Instead of just getting people what they want, buy something you want. “Wait,” you may say, “that’s being selfish!”

Yes, it is, especially if you’ve already spent all year buying every little (or large) item you fancy. (If you’re like me, though, you’ve never really stopped to consider buying something that isn’t particularly useful or necessary, but something you would simply enjoy. What’s wrong with a little reward at the end of the year, especially if you give yourself a reasonable price limit?)

The best gift I got this holiday season was a Wii which Chris and I bought for ourselves. And it wasn’t even the Wii itself that I enjoyed; it was the effort that Chris and I put into finding the Wii, and all the time we spent together trying to get the Wii. When Chris came home after finally buying a Wii, we didn’t even open it that first day, but just left it in the box where we could look at it every so often. Don’t get me wrong; the Wii is nice, but hardly memorable by itself.

So consider this: instead of spending $200 per child, you can spend $50 on yourself, and use the time you would have spent shopping and trying to find a parking space, with your family. Alternatively, limit yourself to purchasing one small, but thoughtful, gift per person.

Or you could do what I’m considering — only buy gifts for the dogs. Because dogs don’t care how much you spend on them. Dogs forget their gifts as soon as the gifts are out of sight (or eaten, as the case may be), and they have no concept of what they want. So they love you just the same whether you spend a lot of money on them or nothing at all. All they want is to spend time with you, and they don’t care if you come bearing gifts or not.

Posted by: ssjane | December 27, 2006 | 11:45 pm
Posted in: This Life