Gifts
Thu., November 21, 09:12 AM
I like to think of this as an experiment that failed. Maybe I’ll try again someday.
Here come the holidays, ho ho ho! By the time I was in my teens, I realized that I didn’t like equating the holidays – Christmas, Chanukah, Winter Solstice, or any other holiday – with the obligation to buy gifts. Don’t get me wrong, I love to give people presents. I’m especially happy when I see an unusual item and my internal database says, “So-and-so would love that.” What I don’t like is the all-round push to buy presents now. Suddenly every piece of junk advertised on television is described as a “great gift idea”; if you receive one of these, you know that the donor wasn’t thinking too hard about you.
My mother, on the other hand, used to say, “don’t buy me anything. If I want something, I’ll buy it myself.” So, for the most part, we didn’t buy her anything but a card on her birthday, or Mother’s Day, or her anniversary. I can think of two gifts that she really enjoyed. I happened to see a recording of her favorite opera, and I bought it – no occasion involved – because I knew she’d never think to buy it for herself. The other gift happened to be a birthday present, because that was when I called to tell her she was about to become a grandmother. Both of those were thoroughly appreciated because, by that time, I knew how her mind worked.
Anyway, I decided that, when I had children of my own, we would emphasize the lovely traditions of all the holidays and play down the idea of presents. Each child would have his or her own special gift day, the birthday.
The first serious blow to my plans was the birth of my first child – three days before Christmas. I knew it would affect her whole life; on Christmas morning the nurses brought me my “Christmas bundle,” in a new blanket all tied up with a big red bow and with her “first Christmas stocking” attached.
I wasn’t ready to give up, but fifteen months later my second child arrived with Easter. The hospital nurses just love theme babies; my third child was in time for Hallowe’en. Yet I still thought I could ignore the flow.
At Chanukah, I gave useful presents – the kind of thing I would have had to buy anyhow. Tradition says “a gift for each of the eight nights.” It never happened when I was little; we got one big one (that outside pressure again). But my kids got new slippers one night, and socks the next night. Underwear, pajamas, maybe school supplies or candy one night. My parents couldn’t wait to shower the grandchildren with all kinds of things, but it was one gift only from Gramma and Grampa at Chanukah.
On birthdays we did the big presents – bicycles, computers, contact lenses. My Musical Daughter got her first keyboard for her sixteenth birthday. My son got his driver’s license on his twentieth. (In our family driving is not automatic at sixteen. There’s a long story attached to Son’s license – which I may or not ever retell.)
Nevertheless, my kids are part of the world, and that’s the way I wanted them to be. Their friends – including roommates, fraternity brothers, and now in-laws – are from many different backgrounds. Most of them celebrate Christmas in a BIG way. And my kids enjoy participating, which I understand, just as I enjoyed having a good time with my friends way back when.
I’m beginning to sound like my mother: “you don’t have to buy me a present.” That doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate the gifts they have given me, including this computer, a gift from Son. It’s just that a gift given for some vague outside reason may not really be appropriate, like the one I found outside my garage the other morning. One of the cats left me a nice, fresh mouse. I know she was thinking of me, but it’s really hard to smile and thank her.
