Gifts

There are plenty of things I like about Christmas.

The music.
The celebration of Jesus's coming.
The food.
The family gatherings.

But there is one thing that I very much dislike: shopping for gifts.

Or, more accurately: shopping for gifts when I have no clue what people need, and have a feeling they really don't need anything I can give them.

You are all bouncing in your seats, waving your hands, and yelling, "But Mrs. Smuckerrrr..!!"

Calm down. I know what you're thinking.  I should get creative and make stuff.  Special stuff.  Personal stuff.  Tea cozies and candles and tote bags and cookies in re-purposed tins and big stick pretzels dipped in white chocolate.

I won't have time for that unless I don't sleep for the next month.  Also, this is too much thinking for a brain so overtaxed that it forgot to invite John and Laura to the family Thanksgiving dinner, thinking they were still in Poland or something.

Thankfully someone else was on the ball and called me up.  "Um, Dorcas???"

The other day while Jenny was in choir I wandered around Walmart, picking up milk and meat but also scouting out gifts.

Clothes? How many people really want their moms to buy them clothes?

That's what I thought.

Electronics?  Tools?  There is no possible way I'll pick the right thing without being specifically told, so why not just hand them a few twenties and say, Here.  Help yourself.

Popcorn in Santa tins, cellophany pre-packaged cappuccino mixes with cups, glass jars with red candles so strongly scented of cinnamon that they set off an asthma attack.

Sigh.

Here's what I like:
1. When I know someone needs something and I can fill that need.  Like a gas card for your child's teacher.  Or the year Paul's sister needed a coat and we all pooled our money and Bonnie--whose taste we all trusted and who enjoys shopping--went and picked it out.
2. Words.  If I send Christmas cards, I can't sleep at night unless I include some words conveying what these people mean to us and why they're special.  I would be thrilled if everyone who normally buys me gifts would sit down and write a few pages of nice words instead.

Well, I also wouldn't mind that cute little teapot at Shoppe of Shalom, ceramic, with an infuser, or the stack of cute note papers in the third aisle.

But words would be fine too.

Today I was talking with a young person about how those first gifts after you start dating are fraught with peril and heavy with meaning.  I remember buying Paul I think two different gifts and returning both of them before I finally bought a set of James Herriot books because he likes to read.

However, he has never really liked James Herriot.

He married me anyhow. And today he went to Home Depot and used a gift card from last Christmas to buy some on-sale tools he needed, then he came home and gave me the tools and said I can wrap them up and give them to him for Christmas.

We are one couple who does not fight about finances.

The young person I spoke with, who has an actual guy in her life this Christmas, said,

Quote of the Day:
"I always thought if I was going to buy a guy clothes, it would be from a cool store, like Old Navy.  But the other day I was kind of startled to realize that if I was going to buy clothes for him that he'd like I'd probably have to go to Coastal Farms."