9:20 a.m. | 2004-12-18
Ps, Aunt Sue: I Hope You Enjoy The Purse
Every year I get the same feeling all over again. I get this strange worry that I won't be done in time, nothing will be pretty enough and I'll have to put the tag of "belated" on things. I don't like that.
See, I love Christmas. I'm not a huge fan of the religious aspect because it just doesn't satiate my needs, but I love the feeling I used to have as I tried to sleep on christmas eve. I love the anticipation I got as I made my list and handed it to my mother. Granted that reality changed very early as I didn't believe in santa much past 3. I was still excited for the next morning, I was still getting presents. (In fact my mother remembers me looking at her and saying, 'mom, santa's not real is he?' and she looked at me a little crooked as I kept going, 'but that's ok...as long as I still get presents.' My mother scoffed and replied, 'yes hunny, you still get presents.')
I remember having to keep the act up for cousins and friends and not being able to tell them the truth. This jolly old man that climbs on roofs and flies on sleighs? I mean come on.
But I still love the sentiment. Handing a good friend a gift that I spent a lot of time on means something to me. What means nothing to me?
The fact that I'm obligated to buy gifts for people I don't even care about. The fact that society would sneer at me if I didn't send my aunt some piece of crap. In a nutshell, here's how my theory works. She gives me her list. I give her my list. Now I go off to a store and I spend $40 on a purse for her. She goes off and buys me, say, a $40 coat. Now, we have christmas and in her hands is this purse and in mine is this coat. Theoretically it would have been the exact same thing if I would have gone and taken my own $40 and bought my own coat.
It would have saved her time. It would have saved her effort. It would have saved a whole bunch of shit because...this "coat" is rarely the right thing that I wanted and the "purse" may not be the exact one she would have picked. So we payed $40 to gamble on each other's presents.
I think my new theory is going to be that all presents must be homemade and thoughtful. And we're not allowed to have lists. It not only minimizes the cost of Christmas but makes us all a little more thankful and forces us to think about the person we're giving it to.
I know, it'll never happen, but I can hope.
