Out Front Gift Guide 2012
The Tradition of Giving
Make your holiday gifts more meaningful
If you’re anything like me, holiday gifts can be a chore. If your Christmas Eves are usually a desperate dash from shopping mall to shopping mall, wrought with anxious head-scratching and last-minute calls to family members for ideas to wrap up a neglected list, you’re the perfect candidate to use this gift guide.
You’re thinking – let me see if I can get the cultural agreement of holiday giving straight – we get a bunch of stuff we hope our friends and family want, they get a bunch of stuff they hope we want, and our main concern exchanging it on Christmas Day is not being embarrassed to find someone spent on us a vastly different amount than we spent. (Being in different stages in life with different means, some disparities are unavoidable, especially middle school age through college: I hope you liked those scented candles, grandma.) Or worse, the chance that we, heaven forbid, miscalculated whether a forgotten friend or distant relative was close enough to be part of the exchange at all, finding ourselves suddenly sitting with a pristinely-wrapped bright blue package on our laps, our cheeks and ears beet red.
What we often learn from holiday gifts is that we don’t really know our loved ones all that well. The decisions we make to spend on them don’t quite match the decisions they’d make spending the same sum on themselves – begging the question why we don’t all just pleasantly pretend we’ve offered each other the exact same amount of cash and broke even. We’ll resist the temptation to check up on people six months later, asking, skeptically, if they really ever read that book, used that winemaking kit or wore that sweater even once. Given rehearsed, smiling thank yous and traditions like “re-gifting,” we figure we’re lucky to bat .300 with our generous intentions. But hey, Christmas is great for the economy!
Traditions lose their meaning when we’re more caught up in expectations than remembering why they exist at all. Growing up Catholic, I was taught that Christmas gifts are symbols of the gold, frankincense and myrrh three traveling Magi offered to the infant Jesus in the manger, which were, in turn, symbolic of religious lessons. The tradition is probably even older than that – like so many things in Christianity, a re-interpretation of an ancient pagan ritual – but with deep religious significance nonetheless. A far cry from the gadgets, DVDs and accessories we’ve come to expect.
Still, gifting of all sorts has a deep, ancient significance across cultures. Enlightened and post-material as we humans think we are, the concrete gesture of a solid object handed over is easier to wrap our minds around than the abstract love or sentiment that motivates it. Gifts probably do strengthen relationships in ways we aren’t conscious of. Gifts probably do change us in ways we don’t recognize. – By Matthew Pizzuti
Five ways to make holiday gift-planning less tedious & more fulfilling
Give something that has meaning for both of you
Maybe you talked about a specific movie on your first date with your partner. Give something that brings back memories, or has both your interests in it – DVD, a memoir about food, a cookbook – that speaks to both of your interests. That thing you promised to give your niece ten years ago when she was a kid, but didn’t follow through? She might be grown now, but she’ll love it.
Give time
A gift of something you can do together – movie or concert tickets, a promise to spend a day building something together, or a trip for two – is sure to be remembered. Promise to volunteer for a cause your loved one cares about, or a coupon for favors or errands you can do for someone. Promise to teach someone to do something you’re known for doing well.
Give anonymously, then reveal yourself in person
Leave a series of gifts on someone’s doorstep, or mail a series of packages anonymously, leaving a friend or family member wondering where it came from. At a holiday gathering, give the last, best thing in the series with your name on it, revealing it was you all along.
Give something you made
Homemade gifts can be cheesy if you’re not the crafty type – but there are ways to make it better. A photo album, a family tree you took the time to research, a book of recipes or a garden you planted outside that won’t reveal itself until spring will mean more than something you bought.
Give to the community
The holidays are a good time to put in a few hours at a shelter or soup kitchen, or get active in an important cause at a time that organizations are losing their volunteers to a season of family obligations.
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