The Gift

Christmas is about giving, among other things, and let me tell you, I totally get the whole "joy of giving" thing. I love to pick presents for people I know and love. I even vaguely like giving gifts to people I don't actually care about.

My favorite person to buy for is my sister and I give her props for the best gift I received this year: a garden gnome. Gifts like that remind me Christmas can be untainted by commercialism. Gifts don't have to be valuable to be personal and yet they don't have to be handmade to avoid the ominous specter of commercialism. While it is important to exchange gifts of comparable value with peers, the absolute monetary value of gift giving is fairly arbitrary. My sister and I have yet to spend twenty dollars on a gift for one another.

I also love receiving gifts, but not without reservations. I hate improperly chosen gifts ("white elephants") and I hate gift cards. Oh, how I hate gift cards. Gift cards manage to be both impersonal and impractical. Surely nobody really believes that a gift card to Starbucks is more personal than handing me cash? At least cash doesn't take up extra space in my wallet. Using gift cards is a chore, even in the lucky circumstance that I actually shop at the specified retailer.

As the joy of giving is double that of receiving, the horror of poor gift giving is double that of receiving bad gifts, so I hate being expected to choose something personal when I don't know my audience. In fact, the bane of my Christmas existence is the gift exchange for our large, extended family in Louisiana. In it I usually give terrible gifts and receive terrible gifts. It's not like we don't love each other, I just happen to live far away and see them infrequently. Additionally, there are massive age barriers to contend with. My cousins range from 13 to 31 and many of my aunts and uncles don't have children my age. The task is always a worthy challenge, though. I'm starting to think of finding appropriate, interesting semi-specific gifts as quite the art form.

One way or another, I hope you will reflect on the gifts you have given and received this Christmas season. Periodically we all forget to fully embrace the joy of giving and receiving, especially when we neglect to immerse ourselves in holiday movies.