The Spirit of Giving

The gifts have been opened, and the crowds of the world can now breathe a final united sigh of relief, as the crazy holiday wave to go out and find something nice for people has finally crashed into their unsuspecting victims(plus their paycheck fattened bank accounts) and is now slowly settling back to that deep, strange place where insidious marketing gimmicks and earnest human interests cuddle.

And there are the few who never managed to send out(or even purchase) these treasured trinkets of appreciation before the roads emptied and the night realized in every home the merry-making of the holidays. For them the gesture is more of a resigned shrug, a satisfying abandonment of the curious hassle so many people seem to get wrapped up in.  I've been a faithful member of this club for a few years now, lending to the fact I've only started working now and haven't got cash to trade trinkets with.

But this year, I'm exercising my right to suffer along with the crazies who dive into malls on holidays and commute on roads reduced to speeds never before seen except among lines snaking from gift-wrapping sections. And dutifully, I've struggled my fair share.

And when I wrapped up the last of my gifts, I fooled myself into thinking it was over.  Lo and behold, the delightfully tragic cycle of giving too much and giving too little was, by and large, never over until you start opening your own gifts.  Where if the whole act of exchanging presents were graphed by the amount of drama involved, the sounds of wrappers unwrapping would signal the climax like rending cymbals and glibly cue some introspection: an attempt to judge the value of your friends by the gifts they give, and, most painfully, why I couldn't give them better gifts--gifts they deserved.

And since I love making math out of things that shouldn't, there were 3 types of gifts I encountered underneath our Christmas tree in the sleepy silence of Christmas morning.  I've ranked them by how I felt about them: emotional impact, drama, pathos, from sucky to smashing:

gifts gone or just as good as

... bitter, bitter, bitter: these are pretty much composed of all those gifts you would have gotten if you sent out your gifts earlier and bothered your monito/monita with holiday guilt.  Or maybe, these are the gifts that never made it due to the financial crisis, logistics or simply because there wasn't anything to send out.  Or perhaps they did reach you, but for the same sad reasons, came in as nameless mugs and dime-store picture frames--which still took some appreciable effort(recycled?), but is still just as unsatisfying.

I pretty much don't mind not receiving presents from people--heck, it's easier on the conscience. Though it would be nice if I didn't have to spend most of Christmas morning unwrapping my mom's stacks and stacks of umbrella's and planners with corporate logos plastered all over.  The exception applies to all my godfathers and godmothers out there, I'm dreadfully disappointed--15 years and counting.

gifts of equal exchange

.. a lot more satisfying than not getting any gifts, of course, is getting gifts.  These are the instances when whatever you send out, you get back; the machinations of Christmas succeeding.  Like our forefather who made a trade of shells and shiny rocks, the most economical of gifts are the ones we appreciate most.  Everyone's happy, nothing to see here.

gifts undeserved

... and then there are these kind of gifts that leave a tangy bitter sweet flavor in the soul.  Being the type to play it safe and expect nothing of people, it devastates me whenever I receive an unexpectedly nice gift, an unexpected person gives me a gift, or worse, both.  The cynical voice in my head whispers bribery, which is why I avoid giving gifts to people who don't expect it. But when I get gifts, it's like "Whoa, somebody cared enough."  I'm emo that way, and chivalrous enough to try and make some kind of recompense in the form of belated New Year's presents.

I appreciate those unexpected gifts best because I learn from them the most and they often lead to new friends and, of course, new goodies. But in equal fashion, these gifts bother my conscience in hefty measures.

So for next year, I'm orchestrating a retaliation. For next year's resolution: start looking for gifts as early as next week--packages of desire and delight that I'll send out not because I feel indebted, but because I want to let people know I care, too.