Let’s be honest: finding holiday gifts can be a real chore. First there’s the list-making: partners and kids come first, of course. Then there’s immediate family, extended family, and the friends you think of as family; teachers and coaches; babysitters and neighbors; coworkers and bosses and everyone else who play a part in our lives. Oh, and don’t forget hostess gifts. And next week’s ornament exchange.
(Did we miss anything? I’m sure we did.)
That’s a lot of gifting, and why Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday exist. But I may have misspoken earlier, about holiday gifts being a chore. Is it really the drudgery that’s implied in using that word, or do we maybe go a bit overboard on gifting because it’s something that at its heart is really worth doing?
Holiday perfectionism is a thing, with lots of us feeling pressure to find the perfect present, host the perfect party, create (or recreate) the perfect memory. We think that if we don’t do these things, somehow everything will be ruined (whatever ruined means). Dr. Seuss’s Grinch thought this too, when he raided Whoville on the night before Christmas:
“PoohPooh to the Whos!” he was grinchishly humming.
“They’re finding out now that no Christmas is coming!”
“They’re just waking up! I know just what they’ll do!”
“Their mouths will hang open a minute or two,
Then the Whos down in Whoville will all cry BooHoo!”
Of course, we know how that story ends, and it’s the same lesson for us as it is for the Grinch. We give gifts for the simple reason that we want to; it shows the people we care about that we do in fact care about them. We think about what they would like, and when we find it we wrap it, attach a tag and then give it. It’s a simple gesture that says here is something I think you would like because you mean something to me.
Giving isn’t a chore, far from it. At its heart giving is a gesture of love and appreciation. There’s nothing that means more than that.