fine whine

Here comes some melodrama, but I'm acknowledging it and just trying to get it all out of my head.

So 2004 (last year, you could say) saw Jessica and I with our own house for our very first Christmas--and we ended up spending it at somebody else's place. I hadn't finished putting together Jessica's gifts (i.e. getting the final bits and wrapping them all) and more little things like that, and to have the storm throw everything out of whack, well, threw everything out of whack.

We drove up to my Aunt's place on New Year's Day to get together with my extended relatives and whilst there we did a brief trunk-to-trunk exchange of gifts with my parents. Drive-by gift giving.

The whole getting-together-with-family thing worked out fine, but the gift-exchanging didn't. The next night I mentioned on the phone that we were not so fond of some of the gifts we had received, and it wrecked everything not yet wrecked.

I know now that there is no tactful way to decline a gift. There's no tact at all in gift reception other than a polite "thank you". I know this now and probably should've thought that then, too, as I ended up saying (in a way I thought nice) that the intents behind some of our presents was, well, mis-intended.

I should've learned back in the late 80s, the first time I ruined Christmas gift-giving. That time around I received a cassette recorder that was considerably smaller than the ones given to my sisters the year before.

What's worse is that it's all on video somewhere. I whined and whined and whined that my radio was too small, that it didn't have input jacks, and so on and so forth.

The lessons I'd learned accepting ugly shirts from grandparents were obviously lost on me, and apparently still are. But is this the way things really should be?

Should the superficial part of Christmas, the requisite gift exchange, be completely shrouded in politeness and manufactured sentimentality? If it's all about family and the strengthening of bonds why should we all be tip-toeing around each other? Of all the people we should be able to be honest and ourselves with, why can't it be with our closest relatives and friends?

Not that I can talk. I strongly dislike the gift-giving process since I don't want to give gifts that won't be liked. To say that I agonize over Christmas shopping is to use the wrong word but to nail the right feelings. I want all the gifts that I give to be perfect and right-on, even though I know that such a thing rarely happens . It's the aggravation when it doesn't happen that far overshadows for me the happiness when it does. That's just how I am, I guess.

To be fair, I don't really like getting gifts either. I tend to agonize about them too, not wanting people to pay too much for things nor to give me nice things to duplicate things I already have (the too many pairs of boxer shorts or socks problem). When pressed I often cannot write a list of things that I want people to buy me.

I think that I'll start pushing for people to make donations in my name. That way everybody wins, right?