The part
I hate most about
holidays. It just has always seemed
awkward for me. So, I was thinking today in
English class (I never actually
learn, anyway) about why it's so awkward. Seeing as I had it long
period, I came up with a huge
rant that explains every
detail of giving gifts, as follows.
The first
part that I
hate is the actual deciding whether or not to get a
gift for some
body. I always thought it'd be especially awkward if I bought somebody a gift and they had nothing for me, or the other way around. So do I get
one and only give it if they bring the
topic up? I can never figure it out. Most of the
time, I simply get a small gift or two, put them in my
cargo pants, and give them to anybody who gives me a gift. But that's not much of a
defense.
The second thing I
hate about giving gifts is that I never know
what to get a person. Do I want to get a really
expensive thing for a person? No, because then they might feel bad for getting me something less expensive. Do I even know what the person wants? Most times I don't. Well,
luckily, I came up with an
answer that makes sense for this
problem:
Giving gifts should focus on the heart of the giver. They should be a part of your soul. The poet can write a poem and give it to a person, and the recipient will know that it came from the heart of the poet. But if you just go out and buy jewelry from somebody, you're stealing the talent, essencially, from the person who made it. The goldsmith won't be able to give that gift, and nobody will ever see the ring and be reminded of him. It's not unique anymore. But, if you made that ring and gave it to somebody, then every time they look at their hand and see it, they'll think of you. So, the only gift worth really giving is the gift that you identified as coming from you--the one that's special, and can't simply be copied or replaced.
However, there's one last, huge problem that I've found. What are you supposed to do when you recieve a gift? I don't want to seem
displeased with it, but, by the same
token, I don't want to seem overly
joyful. If I show dis
pleasure, then the
giver won't be happy because they will think their gift wasn't
good enough for me. But, if I seem too happy they might think that I like the gift more than I like them. The only happy
medium is to simply ex
change items that were
custom made. That way, if a person writes a poem, there's no
value placed on it, unlike the
material gifts we usually associate with
gift-giving. You won't be able to contrast the worth because they both mean the same to the person who gave them away--they were a piece of that person's soul, and now they have been offered up to another person to show
friendship, or
love.
So, if you have any talents (and most
people) do, use them to give gifts, not your
wallet this
Christmas,
Hanukkah,
Kwanzaa, or whatever the hell you celebrate and give gifts for. If
all else fails,
creativity counts as a talent--use that to think up a gift that would mark it as uniquely coming from you. Don't simply fall
victim to the
machine that wants you to
steal somebody else's gift, and give it as if it came from you.