I’ve been thinking about the question ever since Wendi Thomas asked it a couple of weeks ago: Can you remember three gifts you got for Christmas last year? No, off the top of my head, I couldn’t.
But this week was my birthday, and I’m shopping for Christmas, and I realized that indeed there are gifts that I don’t forget. It’s been a difficult time — lots of work, lots of friends having troubles – so I decided to draw some strength from the gifts and love that my friends have given me over the years. I put on my lovely blue cashmere sweater from Rosemary, who told me when she gave it to me that she pictured me wearing it while I was writing a newspaper column. I added the fabulous earrings from Becca that I’d never have picked for myself, but that suit me perfectly. Andy bought me my cowboy boots years ago, just because. My toast this morning from my friend Lela’s kitchen; first bread she’s made in years, and she shared it with me for my birthday. And my desk at work is full of tokens of friendship; I particularly love the colorful tile from Lisa that says “Desire What You Have.”
While Wendi’s point is well-taken — we generally give way too much stuff with way too little meaning — for me, today, the gifts that my friends and family have taken time to pick for me stand for much more. They are tangible representations of love, caring and time.
What gifts could be better than those?
December 20th, 2007 at 5:39 pm
Well… unfortunately for Wendi’s point, I got REALLY GOOD gifts last year and have no trouble remembering that my husband bought me a new computer, and my mom bought me the world’s most excellent sewing machine, which makes quilting much easier, and my friend gave me this luxurious coffee table book about the quilts of Gee’s Bend. I think if you’re not exactly poor enough to be in need, but strapped enough that there are plenty of things you would feel bad about buying for yourself, maybe Christmas gifts are more meaningful.
I read a study recently about the value of gifts. What the researchers did was this: they got a bunch of college students to list all the gifts they had received that Christmas, with the retail price of the gifts. Then they asked the students how much THEY would be willing to pay for the items in question, if they were buying them for themselves – completely ignoring any sentimental value, just considering the gifts as consumer goods. The answers ranged from more than the retail price to zero. On average, the gifts lost about 30% of their value by not being something the receivers wanted. Parents and romantic partners were the best at picking good gifts, while grandparents and co-workers came in last.
Of course, these are college students, the exact age of people who are least likely to communicate with their elders and share interests with them. It would be interesting to see the same study done among grown people.
(Regarding grandparents and bad gifts: when I mentioned this study to my husband, he recalled a time when he was eight years old and his grandmother gave him a gift basket of scented soaps. He’s pretty sure it wasn’t intended as a comment on his hygiene, since he was the sort of little boy who refused to play with mud because it was ‘icky,’ but he’s not altogether sure the package wasn’t addressed to the wrong person. Nevertheless, he thanked her politely.)
In my family, my dad hates guessing people’s tastes, and my mom thinks it’s cheating somehow if you just get what people put on a list, so my dad and I have had a benign conspiracy for the past twenty years: we meet secretly and buy each other’s presents together, plus putting our heads together to buy stuff for Mom. We make a day of it, meeting for breakfast, shopping, and hopefully being finished in time for a long, pleasant lunch. Then we pretend to be surprised on Christmas for the benefit of my mother. I think my mom, who’s not completely clueless, probably knows what’s up, but she graciously pretends to be fooled by our act and everyone’s happy.
Still, the best gifts are the ones you love but never would have picked for yourself. The perfect CD by a group you never heard of, the perfect book on a subject you didn’t know you would find fascinating, the shirt in a style completely unlike your usual mode of dress that looks great on you. I try to find at least one of these for each of my family members; sometimes I strike gold, and sometimes I strike out. I have a couple of friends who are especially good at this, and you’re right, Leanne, they’re the best gifts of all.