RE-GIFT OF THE MAGI
The December holidays can be the most wonderful time of the year. Good food, good friends and tons of powerful drinks with heavy creams and warm spiced wines. The holidays can also be a source of sadness for some, but there’s always a glimmer of hope for the unemployed, the sick and the downtrodden even at this time of year.
They say that it’s better to give than to receive, and that’s true. But our giving muscles should be working at full-strength during the whole year and not just in the middle chunk of December. Sliding a few bucks out of your wallet to help the less fortunate seems like a stunning act of kindness, but it’s more a selfish act to warm the cockles of your own heart rather than helping others. Try giving in May after you’ve gotten your tax return instead of getting that obnoxious 84” HD plasma television you’ve been eyeballing.
As a child, I was spoiled rotten by my grandparents and all my parents’ siblings at Christmas. I received an absurd amount of gifts. You would of thought I’d grow up to be a spoiled adult who expected everything to be given to me, but now that I’m older I could care less about receiving holiday gifts. In fact I don’t want anything at all. There’s nothing that I want or really need and if I do need it, I can buy it on my own. I’ve actually become more of a minimalist and enjoy the freedom (both mentally and physically) of owning very little. I feel comforted to know that at any temperamental moment, I can throw it all by the wayside and go backpacking around the planet a few dozen times… if the desire should arise.
One of the great horrors of the holidays is receiving a gift that you don’t want or like. Not only do you have to strain your acting chops pretending to like it, you get depressed later on because you realize someone actually paid hard-earned money on something that you’ll toss in your closet and not see again until you do a Spring cleaning or move. I’m all in on the capitalist ideals of the USA, but wasting money on dopey items is heartbreaking no matter how you slice it.
I’m not talking about so-called “bad” gifts like socks or even sweaters with doe-eyed kittens on them. Those tend to be useful once you reach a certain age. I’m talking about mind-benders like grandfather clocks made of cheese or a 24-pound turquoise felt sun hat that Goldie Hawn sported in a magazine back in 1981. Even something as thoughtful as a man’s wallet can be wince-inducing if it’s red leather with giant white stitching.
This is probably why the gift certificate is so popular these days. People have started to realize that taste is a personal thing and pink jumpsuits should be left to certain sections of our population, and not staring up from the lap of your nephew on Christmas morning... Unless he asked for a pink jumpsuit, which is something else entirely.
The absolute worst gifts to receive are those that are re-gifted. The dreadful holiday re-gift is doubly horrifying because it’s blatantly obvious that the gift was simply shifted from one party to the next. It can be embarrassing to receive because you were either forgotten about in the first place or simply given something that no one wanted. It’s possible that the re-gift you receive has been re-gifted four or five time. If little Johnny is getting a box of chocolate covered prunes, you know something has gone terribly wrong down the chain. It sometimes gets to the point where people can’t remember what’s in the wrapping anymore and handing off a regift could be a game of Russian Roulette. “Oh look, you gave our six year-old a set of fireplace matches, something she’s always wanted.”
One year when I was about 18, one of my parents’ friends gifted me a box of pumpkin candy. I took it with a smile as I’m not one to turn down a gift—I came to their house with nothing and left with something. But what was so ham-handed about this gift was that it was in Thanksgiving-like packaging. Not only was this gift re-gifted, it was re-gifted from a different holiday. Halloween candy would have been preferential to Thanksgiving pumpkin candy. I like pumpkin, but from October 1st through the end of November, everything that’s made into food is made with pumpkin and I feel candy is one thing that should be exempt.
To add insult to injury, the pumpkin candy box looked as though it’d been stomped by a pack of wild boars. The cellophane wrapping was tearing in multiple spots and each box corner was at certain levels of crushed. At that point the thing should have been tossed into the garbage. Basically I was the garbage man in this one-sided gift exchange. “We were going to toss this in the trash, but we gave it to you instead.” Hey, you know the saying… I was once disappointed that I had no hat until I met a man with no head. Take what you get and make the best of it.
But sometimes no gift is just as good, and sometimes better, than a poorly decided re-gift. My friend Chris once got a wooden cane as a gift. He was a healthy and vigorous fifteen year-old, but his uncle thought a beat-up wooden cane would have been something he would appreciate. Two days later, Chris whittled the thing into a lethal weapon that was used to stab a punching bag till it bled sand, so perhaps his uncle was correct. But it’s best to err on the side of caution. When someone walks into your house, hand them a cookie or a stiff cocktail. They’ll forget about gift exchanging in no time.
They say that it’s better to give than to receive, and that’s true. But our giving muscles should be working at full-strength during the whole year and not just in the middle chunk of December. Sliding a few bucks out of your wallet to help the less fortunate seems like a stunning act of kindness, but it’s more a selfish act to warm the cockles of your own heart rather than helping others. Try giving in May after you’ve gotten your tax return instead of getting that obnoxious 84” HD plasma television you’ve been eyeballing.
As a child, I was spoiled rotten by my grandparents and all my parents’ siblings at Christmas. I received an absurd amount of gifts. You would of thought I’d grow up to be a spoiled adult who expected everything to be given to me, but now that I’m older I could care less about receiving holiday gifts. In fact I don’t want anything at all. There’s nothing that I want or really need and if I do need it, I can buy it on my own. I’ve actually become more of a minimalist and enjoy the freedom (both mentally and physically) of owning very little. I feel comforted to know that at any temperamental moment, I can throw it all by the wayside and go backpacking around the planet a few dozen times… if the desire should arise.
One of the great horrors of the holidays is receiving a gift that you don’t want or like. Not only do you have to strain your acting chops pretending to like it, you get depressed later on because you realize someone actually paid hard-earned money on something that you’ll toss in your closet and not see again until you do a Spring cleaning or move. I’m all in on the capitalist ideals of the USA, but wasting money on dopey items is heartbreaking no matter how you slice it.
I’m not talking about so-called “bad” gifts like socks or even sweaters with doe-eyed kittens on them. Those tend to be useful once you reach a certain age. I’m talking about mind-benders like grandfather clocks made of cheese or a 24-pound turquoise felt sun hat that Goldie Hawn sported in a magazine back in 1981. Even something as thoughtful as a man’s wallet can be wince-inducing if it’s red leather with giant white stitching.
This is probably why the gift certificate is so popular these days. People have started to realize that taste is a personal thing and pink jumpsuits should be left to certain sections of our population, and not staring up from the lap of your nephew on Christmas morning... Unless he asked for a pink jumpsuit, which is something else entirely.
The absolute worst gifts to receive are those that are re-gifted. The dreadful holiday re-gift is doubly horrifying because it’s blatantly obvious that the gift was simply shifted from one party to the next. It can be embarrassing to receive because you were either forgotten about in the first place or simply given something that no one wanted. It’s possible that the re-gift you receive has been re-gifted four or five time. If little Johnny is getting a box of chocolate covered prunes, you know something has gone terribly wrong down the chain. It sometimes gets to the point where people can’t remember what’s in the wrapping anymore and handing off a regift could be a game of Russian Roulette. “Oh look, you gave our six year-old a set of fireplace matches, something she’s always wanted.”
One year when I was about 18, one of my parents’ friends gifted me a box of pumpkin candy. I took it with a smile as I’m not one to turn down a gift—I came to their house with nothing and left with something. But what was so ham-handed about this gift was that it was in Thanksgiving-like packaging. Not only was this gift re-gifted, it was re-gifted from a different holiday. Halloween candy would have been preferential to Thanksgiving pumpkin candy. I like pumpkin, but from October 1st through the end of November, everything that’s made into food is made with pumpkin and I feel candy is one thing that should be exempt.
To add insult to injury, the pumpkin candy box looked as though it’d been stomped by a pack of wild boars. The cellophane wrapping was tearing in multiple spots and each box corner was at certain levels of crushed. At that point the thing should have been tossed into the garbage. Basically I was the garbage man in this one-sided gift exchange. “We were going to toss this in the trash, but we gave it to you instead.” Hey, you know the saying… I was once disappointed that I had no hat until I met a man with no head. Take what you get and make the best of it.
But sometimes no gift is just as good, and sometimes better, than a poorly decided re-gift. My friend Chris once got a wooden cane as a gift. He was a healthy and vigorous fifteen year-old, but his uncle thought a beat-up wooden cane would have been something he would appreciate. Two days later, Chris whittled the thing into a lethal weapon that was used to stab a punching bag till it bled sand, so perhaps his uncle was correct. But it’s best to err on the side of caution. When someone walks into your house, hand them a cookie or a stiff cocktail. They’ll forget about gift exchanging in no time.