Kathleen McCall:
Occasional�� Muse�

2001-11-18 - 12:25 p.m.

Ho Ho Ho

Did I really just hear an ad for a performance of Barbie and the Nutcracker? I did, I think I really did.

I'm going to write an article, a rant, all about the commercialization of Christmas and how awful it is. I'm going to write it, and then I'm going to sell it and make lots of money so I can buy my kids a whole bunch of expensive Christmas Crap. Ha!

I like Christmas, really I do. I like a lot of it, anyway.

I like going shopping on Christmas Eve. Earlier in the day, it's all harried women with stress and desperation in their eyes, grabbing the last Seal-a-Meal and the chartreuse silk scarf that people have been stepping on for an hour. But if you wait, they go away, and the Lost People come out, and everybody relaxes and starts talking to each other. Last year I was at the grocery in a long line, and a guy got in line with an electric knife and a Chia Pet, I swear to God. Someone said, "I hope that's not for your WIFE," and he grinned and said it was, and we all set him straight right then and sent him off back to the aisle with the bath salts and the scented soaps and lotions. I like to think we saved a Christmas Eve, there.

I got a propane torch for Christmas once, but it was just what I wanted. When you've asked for a propane torch, bath salts just aren't going to get it. But it's still weird, to ask for things. Isn't it? My ex was of the "list" school. I'm of the "lists are tacky" school. Both are unbearably weird.

The "list" people write down what they want. "Here's what I want, go and get it for me." Now, this should make Christmas easy, right? But why not go the next step? Just give me money. I'll go get what I want, and that way I know it will be right. No, wait - if I'm going to give YOU money, and you're going to give ME money, then we can just skip the whole stupid thing and go out and spend our OWN money. "What'd I give you this year?" "A hardback book, new underwear and a bathrobe. And thanks - I really like them."

The "lists are tacky" people are just as crazy. "It's your job to figure out what I want and give it to me." That's how you end up with an electric knife and a Chia Pet. Or obsessing over whether someone will like the Chia Pet you got THEM, was it the right one, is it too small or too large or too expensive or too cheap? "No List" people also believe each gift should come from the heart, and therefore can never return the Chia Pet you got them, because that would be rude; and so our houses are full of things like wooden toilet paper holders with duckies painted on them, and chartreuse silk scarves with boot prints.

There's no good saying I don't want gifts, though. I do. I have that inner child that wants presents, that wants surprises, that wants colored paper to tear off. I read an article this year from someone who buys HERSELF a small gift every time she goes Christmas shopping, so her inner child will feel loved. I can't decide whether that's a great idea or incredibly sad. I know that every year, more of my gift-sharing friends have to make agreements to skip adult gifts, to do only for the children, because the gifts have gotten so large and expensive that they just can't be maintained. I understand it, and I even agree with it, in a mournfully adult way. But I wish we could move the pendulum the other direction.

I think we should get gifts for everyone. Everybody we know and like. That's what I think. I think we should put a big cardboard box in our closet, and all year long when we see some very small item that makes us think of a friend, we should get it and put it in the box. One item per person, all small. Like the stuff you put in your kids' stockings. Tokens. Then the week before Christmas we should deliver them all. That way, each adult would have a small hill of little stuff to open up. It would be a happy thing. You would know people thought of you during the year, and you would get a new screwdriver and an envelope of bath salts and a card of wooden buttons shaped like elephants. And grown-ups could quit having to say, "Adults don't NEED presents, we're far too mature for that sort of thing."

But don't listen to me. I also think Barbie and The Nutcracker should never appear in the same sentence.

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