I love Christmas.
I’m part of a large family, so all through my childhood, the chaos and excitement compounded. It’s hard to repeat that vibrant experience as you get older, but having kids of your own gets you back in the mood quite quickly. The boy is overdoing it with Feliz Navidad and O Tanenbaum (pre-school concert on Friday), but he’s positively thrumming with excitement about the holiday… and, let’s be honest, the presents.
So, what’s the problem? Buying presents for other people. I’m not a grinch… I love finding just the right present for a family member or friend, but it’s hard to end up in the proper place if you combine the following elements:
- Procrastination, which also makes the experience more expensive (think: shipping!)
- Perfection, because you want the gift to be what the recipient really wants, which means you need to demonstrate you really know the person well enough to match the gift and the recipient
- Presumption, where through giving a list or (not so) subtle hints, the recipient expects they know what will be coming
In sum, I want to give an amazing gift to the right person, but I want it to be a total surprise, and I make that process especially stressful by not focusing on it until, oh, about now.
Normally, that would be an expensive recipe for potential disaster, but my family got smart this year and we’ve all drawn one name out of a hat, and can focus our attention on that one person, guilt-free. So…. Dad, what do you want? If you tell me, then I can’t get it because it won’t be a surprise, so I’ll just guess and hope that the potential gap between gift and desires isn’t too wide. Like every other year!
The other problem with Christmas is that once I start shopping for presents for other people, I get lots of ideas about nifty things that I would enjoy. Nothing I need, but there are some useful ideas at Uncle Mark’s gift guide and also at TidBITS.