After spending the day Christmas shopping, I have a number of thoughts on gift giving. I have never been particularly big on giving Christmas presents. Admittedly I was big on receiving them when I was younger, but that was before I had the option of buying things for myself. Ever since I headed to college, the same pattern has emerged at Christmas time. I usually get into town a day or two before Christmas, and do a whirlwind pass through overcrowded shopping centers to pick up a variety of items that I am rarely totally satisfied with. It has been pointed out to me that this sits in stark contrast to the way that I approach nearly every other situation in life, as the meticulously prepared, detailed planner.
It really comes down to priorities, and I am beginning to recognize that giving Christmas presents isn't an important priority to me. This is not because I don't care about those around me, but because I am someone who values filling a need, which is rarely what is happening at Christmas. I spend forever looking for gifts, but usually settle on something simple, that meets whatever I feel the minimum requirements are. Basically I have trouble spending a lot of money on something that isn't really needed. If I don't know of any needs that I am trying to meet, looking for something that meets a need I didn't know existed is rarely an effective strategy. During the rest of the year, I have no hesitation to give away things whenever I see a need that I can meet, but I don't give just for the sake of giving. And I don't usually wrap those things up with a nice bow on top either, usually valuing function far over form.
For example I usually give my dad books for Christmas, since he is an avid reader, but I have given him ten books in the last two months, just because I thought they would apply to his life. They weren't wrapped or anything, and it was fairly low key, but wrapping up a similar one and calling it a Christmas present feels kind of ridiculous.
When my brother was younger, he had an interesting habit of giving gifts to people that were things that he actually wanted. This has made me particular sensitive to that inclination, even though we all live in separate places. If one of us gives another a game for Christmas, we are all going to end up playing it together, so from a certain perspective, we are really buying it for ourselves. If I come across a cool game during the year, I buy it, and share it with my family when I get home. I don't usually wrap it up and call it a "present." It will usually reside at my parent’s house after that, so it is pretty much the same as giving it to them, without all the formalities. While I do that frequently during the year, doing something similar at Christmas seems fairly contrived by comparison, especially since I usually have trouble finding new things to do that with at Christmas time.
And then there is the issue of duplicate presents. We all know each other well enough that if an obvious present exists for someone, more than one person will frequently give it to them. My dad and I have both given my brother the same book on numerous occasions, and I have gotten the same thing from both of my parents before, and even one thing twice from the same person. (Reasons not to do your Christmas shopping over a long period of time, especially if you wrap the gifts as you go.)
Anyhow, this year I got an early start, and did some of my shopping two months ago. This was followed by ordering the rest online a week ago, giving me just enough time to discover that even though they were “shipped” with tracking numbers, the items I was looking for are actually out of stock until after Christmas. So I ended up braving the crowds four days before Christmas, in my earliest trip yet, to collect a number of items that will suffice, but are not as good as the ones I had on order. Next year I will have to plan ahead more, and get my order in earlier, we’ll see how that goes.
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