Five days until Christmas and I’ve already caved. I’m buying presents. I’m going to Bloomingdale’s after work tomorrow to push through the crowds (and be pushed) and wait in line while Winter Wonderland (by far the worst of the holiday songs – what does conspiring by the fire mean anyway? Every time I hear that song I picture two people on a couch plotting world domination) plays over the sound system with the sincere hope that I will be spending my hard earned money on something someone will appreciate.
Can someone tell me what to get Dads? They’re probably the hardest people in the world to shop for because they have everything, and if they don’t have everything they don’t tell you that they don’t have everything and you have to, through some form of divine intervention, figure out that what they don’t have is a new container of Titleists and the DVD of Bridge on the River Kwai.
Moms are just as hard to read. You could draw their name on a piece of paper with a red crayon and they’d frame it and put it on the wall in their office and act like it’s the best thing they’ve ever gotten. “For me?!” Gasp! You never know if what you gave them is something really great or totally bogus, they just love that you thought of them. I mean, I guess.
With siblings it’s like some strange competition, because pretty much everything else in your lives from the moment you could speak was about one-upping the other one. So Christmas gifts are no different. Who is more creative, who spent the most money, who had their ears open all year to really get the one thing that the other one wanted. I mean never mind about the gift, the stress alone is enough to make you want to just spend your life savings on a Lexus with that really big bow so that you’ll never have to worry about not being the better gift-giver ever again.
Maybe the Grinch was right. And I’m not saying I have a heart two sizes too small, I’m just saying that the whole capitalistic idea that drives this holiday is pretty ridiculous and it, with it’s not-so-perfect gift giving tradition, is driving families apart all over the world.
Oh, and did I mention that I hate shopping? I can already feel the chest pains and claustrophobia setting in that only comes along with being in tight, high-pressured spaces with women wielding shopping bags. Maybe that’s “the Eskimo way,” though you’d never know it because that song, like the holidays, doesn’t make a lot of sense.
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