‘If you can’t deduce where I keep my lipsticks — top middle drawer in the master bathroom — there’s no way I want you picking out chandelier earrings for me’
If we must exchange presents, let’s at least try to get it right
Know what I want for Christmas? Nothing. You heard right. Nothing. If I needed it, I already have it. If I wanted it, I’ve already lavished it upon my deserving self.
I don’t want much stuff anymore and the stuff I really want — real estate, bearer bonds, fabled gemstones — nobody seems willing to buy me.
Skinflints! So, unless you’re willing to part with some serious coin, skip tucking something with my name on it under the tree. Unless you’ve torn a page from O. Henry’s The Gift of the
Magi, I’d suggest forbearance and not the pastel, polar fleece mittens. You’ll only alienate me further. I want a gift from the heart or from the treasury. The rest is just retail rubble.
I’ve been put off gifts. Oftentimes, they’re nothing but a disposal problem. The very idea of manufacturing delight is a bit suspect. You, the gift giver, conjure what I’d like and then you estimate what size or colour I might want it in. This is a flawed model. If you can’t deduce where I keep my lipsticks — top middle drawer in the master bathroom — there’s no way I want you picking out chandelier earrings for me. You know nothing about me. If, that I like muscular reds like Amarone, but lissome floral fragrances has escaped you, please don’t show up with a reedy pinot grigio or a flacon of Heat, by Beyoncé. You’ll only make me feel that I walk this world alone. I’d probably swill the Beyoncé perfume and dab the pinot behind my ears. Yes, if a gift makes the recipient feel unfathomed and obscure, well, then you’ve screwed up royally, my friend.
T’was a time I wasn’t so jaded. I recall the Christmas gift of my first boyfriend. It was a sweater. He had seen me swooning at the mall over a sleek merino wool black turtleneck. I unwrapped something angora. Buttercup yellow. My heart sank when I knew I was going to have to wear it. But he had chosen it. It’s purpose was to gladden my heart and make me rejoice in the spirit of the holiday season … well that, and weaken my resolve to remain a good girl. And so I wore it … and with a smile on my face. Major fail for him, however, as his gift only disqualified him for further horizontal considerations.
Years pass. My husband hands me Christmas gift. He can hardly wait for me to unwrap it. Given his unbridled anticipation, I am pr-e-tty certain it’s the emerald necklace he knows I’ve been dreaming of. He’s beside himself with excitement. Open it! Open it!
I open it. It’s a holster. Nothing green in sight. Just Gortex. He can hardly wait to tell me the story: He walks into the sporting goods store in the Italian district in Vancouver. A voice pipes up from a clutch of men watching televised soccer. “What can I do for you?” I’m looking for a holster. For yourself ? Naw … it’s for the wife; she likes to keep her hands free while she’s cooking.
He loves this story. I nod along: yes, yes, so funny. I now have a holster. No emeralds, but something for carrying my air pistol. We have acreage; I like to shoot at targets. At that moment, I was thinking he’d make a very good one.
It beats the videos tapes of two hours of continuous NASCAR wrecks that I also got that year. Hil-arious! And no: It only makes it worse when you say, “It’s the thought that counts.”
In fairness, my ex used to write me a poem every Christmas and those I still cherish.
Every Christmas, my mom used to joke that all she wanted was a couple of sacks of steer manure for her garden. My dad — dutifully and unimaginatively — used to get her a couple of sacks of steer manure. Her garden flourished, but the joie that had spawned their blessed union suffered due to an acute lack of the basic understanding of the human heart. Everyone wants to feel singular and known by someone. Soil enhancement has its benefits, but feeling understood and appreciated needs a fertilizer of a different sort.
At a minimum, there are two opportunities in every calendar year to make someone feel special: birthdays and whatever it is you celebrate at the coldest point in our year. If you screw this up, you deserve to die alone and unloved. By misperceiving the nature of the thoughtful gift, you’re abandoning ship. Kids, without any guidance whatsoever, give great gifts. Those macaroni necklaces and dime store treasures are so imbued with inspiration and aspiration, you can’t help but love them. At the back of my lingerie drawer I still have the resin turtle that my seven-year-old son bought for me with “his own money.” A couple of times a year I still wear the “aquamarine” necklace he bought for me, even though the “sterling” has worn away; whaddya expect for $5? He recognized that I liked turtles and that I was a sucker for a particular shade of blue. I have a sequined purse my daughter bought for me more than a decade ago just because I’d exclaimed about the colour. I’ve never used it, but keep it just the same.
Oh, a good gift does the heart a world of good. A bad gift, however, is a drop of lemon in the milk. If we’re going to make the season about giving and getting, let’s try to get it right. As for me, all large diamonds — fabled or cursed — are welcomed. Failing that, a killer macaroni necklace … or nothing at all.