As Christmas Day fast approaches it is timely to reflect on the ghosts of Christmas presents past. Every since the Wisemen from the East brought the infant Jesus gold, a bunch of incense stick and some embalming fluid people have been giving each other bad gifts to show their level of affection.
12 Days of Christmas further confirmed the tradition by suggesting that 8 maids a milking and a diverse aviary of birds, laying, swimming, sitting and calling are amongst other things the perfect way to demonstrate ones love.
In my family we have maintained this tradition. As children we gave money – a 5c piece to each sibling and 10c for the parents. This was followed up a year later with pinecones decorated with glitter and then wrapped. The glitter of course came off with the paper when unwrapped resulting in the gift being an old pinecone with lumps of glue dotted across it.
No discussion about bad gifts would be complete with out ties, bags of peanuts, ill-fitting clothes and any gift given or received through a workplace Secret Santa.
As an exception and thus proving the rule my family had a three year period of giving great gifts. I personally received a learn to fly helicopter session, a ticket for the Seinfeld tour in New York and other adventure experiences. These days however passed. I have already received my gift this year. A watch. A cheap watch, bought from a newsagency. A cheap imitation of a good watch. I want to be careful not to sound ungrateful. The problem I have is that the watch came with an amount of money folded up in the watchband. Why did they not use they money to buy a good watch instead. They could have bought the original watch of the same design instead of the knock off. Talk about geese a-laying.
I am not immune to bad gift selection. I once gave my sister a dressing gown. A men’s dressing gown. This was not the problem because she had in fact specifically requested a men’s dressing gown. I chose a plain brown dressing gown on the basis that it was the ugliest one I could find. This too, was not the problem. The problem came Christmas morning, upon my sister’s opening of the gift I announced to the entire family my reasons for choosing the particular garment.
I have also fallen for the trap of buying gift-packs of body lotions, soaps and bath gels. Essentially a gift that tells the recipient that you think that, at worst they smell or at best have bad skin.
My family tradition states that gifts be open in ascending order of how exciting they would be. This typically meant gifts from mum first. Mum for fear of showing favouritism would often buy almost identical gifts for everyone. This usually resulted in one person being happy with their gift with the rest of the family being nothing but confused. Gifts from Dad were next.
Dad have a reputation for unusual and interesting gifts. As he has aged his gifts are now described best by Kath & Kim when they said “its noice, different, unusual”. Gifts from my sister were always last, highest on the pecking order. Her gift giving ability has proven to be inversely proportional to her maternal instincts.
May this year’s Christmas bring you all a little drummer boy who insists on practicing his paradiddles while you or your baby tries to sleep.
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