Tis The Season To (not) Be Gifting!

Once again the bell-ringers are out polluting the store-fronts with their organized, deafness-inducing begging. The stores are playing repetitious, canned renditions of "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" and "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" so often, their employees are sounding like homicidal Ewoks and looking like Sméagol. The store's motif is red and green with some silver and gold all of which would look great in snow, but with less than 10% of the country having snow ("It's global warming!" "We call it Climate Change now!" "Whatever, it's because of that!" "No it isn't, we can't be sure, but maybe it almost certainly is!"), it just looks ridiculous.

I've done my "buy out the store then stay the fuck away from them" thing for the year so mostly I don't have to listen to it, but the one omnipresent, omni-oppressive, dominating thing about this time of year is the giving of the gifts.

Time recently ran an article about the "Worst. Gifts. Ever." one could get, which only highlighted the whole issue about organized gifting: It's a really BAD idea.

Let's face it, the anticipation of getting the gift is far and away better than the actual gift. The mystery. The suspense. That period of drooling at the packages and boxes that awaited the green flag of Christmas day to tear into like a pack of ravenous velociraptors, teeth bared in grins of gift-nivorous delight - only to experience soul-crushing disappointment when you discover that what you THOUGHT was the Mattel He-man action figure EZ-Fry oven with the kung fu grip turned out to be a cleverly wrapped package of socks and underwear.

To add insult to injury, you're SUPPOSED to be appreciative for this complete betrayal of a child's trust in Santa. It's the "thought" that counts, after all. Yeah, that kind of tripe works so well on a four year old who was expecting to be able to bake Skeletor Kookies and Battle-Cat Cakes later on that day. "What the hell," the child asks himself while modeling these bitterly disappointing gifts like some kind of financially-strapped super hero, "didn't Santa get the letter I mailed?"

So the season to be gifting is actually the season to be whining - a lot, based on the post holiday lines for the refund counters and the courthouse divorce windows.

So for one Scrooge (that's me, by the way), I've rebelled against the whole notion of organized gifting. It's such a sad practice, really. You are EXPECTED to get someone a gift for the holidays and their birthdays. And from that expectation crawls the gut-churning, nausea-inducing, "I'd rather crawl naked over broken glass and then swim through a mile long vat of boiling oil than get another shitty gift I need to smile about getting" moments we all cherish so much upon opening said gift.

I know other people think as I do. I think the fruitcake was intended to be a weapon one sent to their "frienimies" that would be broken up and eaten whereupon the recipients would choke to death. One has to beware of gift horses (or more to the point, they need to beware of the somewhat less than creamy filling of the gift horse). At the same time, you're not supposed to look a gift horse in the mouth. Unfortunately, looking at it any other way means you're very likely going to be looking at a horse's ass for giving the gift in the first place.

The whole concept of expecting a "gift" is such a contradiction of the motives for GIVING gifts in the first place. Gifts SHOULD be appreciated. They SHOULD be given because a person WANTS to, not for some contrived reason where it's expected.

Gifts are an albatross around the necks of both the giver and the receiver. The giver has to put forth the effort of REMEMBERING who to gift, thinking of what the recipient may want (assuming they bother to think of that), trying to fit the gift into the budget, go out and buy it, wrap it and then has to consider the likelihood that the receiver won't like it, will re-gift it, or in some other way won't appreciate the effort that went into the giving.

The gifter EXPECTS gratitude for their efforts, be them large or small. Show me ANYONE who gives a gift who isn't upset by the words, "Is this it?" or a patently insincere, "Thanks." and I'll show you a person who is dead inside or so delusional they can't otherwise operate in the world.

And the person receiving the gift... What a god-awful burden the giver has just dumped on THEM! Most folks would be happier to have a truck-load of horse shit dumped on them! They have to think, "Was MY gift to THEM as good?" or, worse, "Oh, shit, they gave me this and I got them NOTHING!" or even, "What the fuck IS this piece of shit?" and then they have to smile and be gracious and try not to feel like a putz, offended, embarrassed or some other stress-filled emotion as a result of having been handed something for "free" during a period of obligative gifting.

Being handed "Just that I always wanted!" and hearing, "I can't believe you got this for me, it's FANTASTIC!" upon giving the giver your gift back DOES happen, but they're kind of like Bigfoot sightings. You know it happens, but you're never sure if it's real or faked unless you see each other in the same item return lines or someone fucks up and re-gifts you with what you got them the year before.

The size of the can of worms opened up by the very notion of expected gift giving is only exceeded by the lengths to which we go to promote it. Valentine's Day, Father’s Day, Mother's Day, Birthdays, Christmas... Every month or so there's some obligatory, socially mandated demand to go out and buy gifts. It's much less of a "want to" thing than it is a "have to" thing. And on the other side of that gift is someone dreading the likelihood that it's just a cleverly wrapped package of underwear and socks.

I'm NOT for giving gifts with a proverbial gun to my head. A gift shouldn’t be given because it's EXPECTED. That's called "Extortion" in my book. Society will punish you if you don't get the Suzie Slimdoll dancing leotard Rainbow Bunny for your child's second birthday by calling you an unfit parent. Your family will sneer and point and stop inviting you to gatherings...

You know, with a family like that, it COULD be a blessing to not give gifts on expected days.

And one of the things about these days is that they don't always apply or are inappropriately applied. Mother's Day and Father's Day, for example, mean SO much to an orphan and are stroke inducing in families where you can, literally, have FIVE PEOPLE to gift. (The biological mother who donated the egg, the biological father who donated the sperm, the surrogate mother who carried you to term, the adoptive mother you ended up with when Family services took you away because she beat you like a step-child, and the adoptive father who you never saw because he was disgusted with the notion of adoption in the first place). Throw in real step parents and you have a nightmare bordering on the ninth circle of Hell every year.

I always thought that celebrating birthdays was a touch gruesome and somewhat narcissistic. Now, I like the idea of celebrating someone's life. But the thought of, "Hey, you survived another year! Drink up!" seems a bit disingenuous. The giving of the gifts only makes it worse while the receiving of the gifts makes it worser. I've made it a tradition to celebrate things on New Years - everyone celebrating life together, hopefully without too many drunk fights along the way.

No giving of gifts. No receiving of gifts. No crushed hopes. No broken dreams. No resentments. No hurt feelings.

Just a hangover.

Beats the hell out of crawling naked over broken glass and swimming through a mile long vat of boiling oil...