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Season's Rantings
Okay, I hate to do this ... but given that two friends have asked me for a paper address so they can send me a Christmas card, it is obviously time for a rant.
I've done this rant before, but not in this format, and I'm not even sure if I've done it in my journal. So here we go.
I do not care much for Christmas. Oh, I like giving gifts a lot, and I like getting them well enough (although I never know what to say, so I just say "thank you" and drop it, which I'm always sure leaves them thinking I will throw the gift in the trash as soon as they leave). I just don't understand why Christmas in particular should be a season for wretched excess. Can't you just give someone a present because you feel like it? Can't I only give presents when I feel like it? Why should I be made to feel obligated to give just because it's December?
I do not like getting Christmas cards, not because I'm a Grinch, but because I refuse to reciprocate and I don't like the guilt. Some gifts are the same way. And people will insist, "No, no, you don't need to reciprocate - I'm doing this because I want to," and I believe them ... but the guilt is still there, and frankly I'd rather have guilt about other, more important, things.
I have been trying for some years to escape Christmas. I've mostly succeeded. The best thing I could have possibly done to avoid Christmas was move away from my family. Now, don't get me wrong - I like my family, and I like visiting them for the holidays. I don't get to see my family often enough. But when you're coming in from faraway parts with only a limited amount of luggage space, generally the gift is you - they don't expect you to bring presents, or carry them home.
Another helpful hint for the Christmas Avoider: Be very hard to buy for. I don't go in for toys or appliances much, food doesn't travel well, and I have extremely peculiar taste in clothes, and with the few recreational items I buy regularly - books, games, CDs - it's so difficult for anyone to tell what I have and don't have that people have just given up trying, which suits me fine.
Rather than give some tchotchkeleh that I'll throw out, people have taken to giving me lots of gift certificates. I realize people don't like giving those because they seem like such a puny gift. They are, however, my all-time favorites. (I'd like to get my relatives to branch out beyond bookstores and home-furnishings stores - but I'm not up to telling them that a gift certificate at Express or Victoria's Secret or Lane Bryant would be really swell ....)
The gift certificate thing has especially helped with my mother, who is a horrid Christmas offender. Every year she tells me on the phone that she's not going to buy anything. Every year I end up with a pile (and I do mean a pile) of presents from her anyway. The first year we came down, we had to figure out how to get it all back home and it was unholy hell. (Nonelvis had a big pile of gifts from her too - my mother adores Nonelvis.)
After another year I warned them: I wasn't carrying anything home. (We were on a plane, which meant carry-ons only. I haven't actually checked baggage for a plane trip in eight years. I don't trust it.) Did this help reduce the pile? No. We packed it up in a huge box and my mother mailed the whole thing to us after the fact. Parcel post.
This year I have hopes. When she called me to do the Christmas Report, the first thing she said was, "We're not drawing names this year or anything." See, I have a big family. (Nonelvis' is quite small.) Some years everybody buys gifts, other years (when we're all poor) each adult draws another adult's name - thus, theoretically, everyone only buys one gift. (People cheat, though, and of course the kidlets get loot from everyone, which is as it should be.)
This year, my mother was in effect telling me, Christmas had been cancelled. Not surprising, given that the whole family had burned all their time and money getting together for my sister's wedding in October. In fact, I told her, I was sorry, but we wouldn't be able to come down. No cash. We are driving to see Nonelvis' parents instead, and having a Jewish Christmas (that is, we'll go get Chinese food and see a movie).
Nonetheless, sometime in the next two weeks I will not be at all surprised to see a big box on my doorstep from my mother. And, of course, I will be getting a gift for her.
Oh, yes, I admit it - despite my attitude, there are some people wild horses couldn't stop me buying for. These days I buy gifts only for a small handful of people, but there's definitely a "must" list. I gave Judy her Chanukah/Christmas gift already - a gift certificate for MAC cosmetics. Marc is probably going to get some small gift because my big expenditure was buying a domain name for him. Nonelvis and I are on a special basis - we give each other things back and forth and no one is really keeping score. I'll probably get her a cake-decorating kit she coveted openly at a party the other night. She is probably getting me a faster modem. That takes care of the local crowd.
For the out-of-state crowd, I will end up buying gifts for my mother, my stepfather, my sister and her husband, and my grandfather. I really probably should buy something for Nonelvis' parents as well, since we'll be visiting them and they always get me something even though I ask them not to. See? You can't trust anybody, even Jewish people, at this time of year! Judy wasn't supposed to get me anything either. But at least with Judy I knew what to buy her. Nonelvis' parents really are difficult to buy for, and my grandfather is worse. He was seventy-five in March. He wants very little, and if he wants it, he already has it, and if he doesn't have it, I can't afford it.
Sounds kinda like buying for me, I'm told.
My sister is a different problem. She and her husband are very poor right now, and she's not buying gifts because she can't afford it, and she's asked people not to get her anything. Of course I will get her something anyway, because she's my sister and I like giving her gifts.
The observant reader will note that I have just contradicted one of my own positions. Well, it's like this: If I'm buying a gift for someone, I know I don't expect reciprocation and am doing it because I enjoy it. But if someone is doing the same for me, I feel guilty. Follow my rules implicitly and no one will get hurt, y'see?
Yes, I know that ultimately my double standards lead to a hypothetical situation where I can buy all the gifts I want for other people, but no one is permitted to buy me anything.
Fact of the matter is, that sounds like a perfect Christmas to me. I get to buy lots of goodies, then sit back and watch other people open them while I sip eggnog.
Of course, the problem with that is that then no one gets to have fun as I open their gifts, but think of the money they'll save.
Okay, okay, I'm being cranky on purpose. Truth is, I'm not that much of a grouch, I'm just having you on. In general I would think Christmas was an absolutely delightful time ... if there were no tinsel, no Christmas-exploiting advertising, no carols played on shopping-mall and grocery store PA systems, and in general no carols written after 1900 at all.
And although some gifts make me cringe and others make me not know what to say, once in a while the people who know me well really surprise me. Judy got me the videotape of Shock Treatment. I hadn't even realized she'd seen me write about it. Moments like that are just as much fun as the receiver as they are as the giver.
I like Christmas parties (even though I gripe about preparing for them), assuming they're not office parties, which should be banned. ("Office" and "recreation" are two concepts which should never, never be combined. Forced jollity with one's co-workers, and worse, one's superiors, is not a good time - it's a psychic ordeal.)
I like Christmas lights and Christmas trees and I even like a certain - limited - amount of Christmas tackiness. (Or Chanukah tackiness - my aunt sent Nonelvis a trivet which says "Shalom, Y'all". Nonelvis stared at it, speechless, for two minutes. I laughed my head off.)
I think, in short, that while I basically like Christmas, my tolerance for it is very limited. And that's the fundamental problem, because these days Christmas seems to start in mid-November, and by December 1 I'm already ready to chuck the whole thing.
© Columbine
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