Published in the VC Reporter, 12/14/06:
’Tis the season of giving — to me
by Matthew Singer
It is better to give than to receive? We should all be mature enough by now to realize how much crap is loaded into that crusty old axiom — not necessarily because the opposite is true (and it is) but because the sentiment behind it is false. It implies the joy someone else derives from having been given a gift is powerful enough to satisfy the needs of the giver. But seeing somebody happy is not the pull of gift-giving. If people actually enjoy the act of giving, it’s because they like how it reflects on them. It makes them look good, and the appreciation of the receiver validates their self-worth. In reality, giving is as much an egocentric action as stretching your arms out and screaming, “Gimme gimme gimme!” — except these serial givers are paying for the validation. It’s good-cheer prostitution.
So stop all this cloying, disingenuous rhetoric and admit it: receiving is better than giving. I should know. With the exception of the Christmas of my first paying job, I have never bought anything for anyone. And that one time I did, I did not feel measurably better than any of the other years when I only received presents. In fact, I felt slightly worse.
And let’s face it: Receiving gifts is pretty much all Christmas is about. There’s no religiosity left in it, unless you’re like my former neighbor who used to put a huge banner on her garage every December reading “Happy Birthday, Jesus!” And spending time with loved ones? That’s just the mile of broken glass you must crawl through to get to the presents.
As shallow and materialistic as this all sounds, at least I can say I’m better than my cousins. These two mooks, with whom I spent practically every Christmas growing up, would literally shred into their presents at the word go, ponder the gift for about three seconds, then toss it aside and continue throwing up a hailstorm of wrapping paper and packing peanuts. This drove our aunt insane. She would constantly try to orchestrate the present-opening in some orderly fashion so all would get their proper due, and my cousins would leap onto their piles like a pack of wolverines slaughtering a moose and be in the kitchen cramming pastries down their throats within five minutes, leaving nothing but bows and empty boxes in their wake. (What’s more, their parents always had to buy them pairs of everything because one would inevitably covet whatever the other got, leading to a whole lot of fighting and crying by the afternoon. This continued up until the last holiday I spent with them, which was three years ago.)
I, however, was willing to be patient, even though I hated the tortured process of the gift-opening ceremony: holding the item up, going “Ooooh,” making some comment about how great a gift it was and thanking whatever relative bought it for me. Of course, this calmer, more civilized method always took two hours, since our Christmases usually involved 10 to 12 people (and if there was a kid under the age of 10 there, forget it). But I preferred to draw it out, because once the excitement of the opening is gone, what’s left to do? Talk to the family? Watch my cousins play their new video game, waiting in vain for them to hand over the controller? If these are my options, I’ll let my 3-year-old cousin attempt to tear the wrapping off a doll house all day.
One year, though, I allowed my hunger for presents to overcome my better judgment. My sister and I woke up at 5 a.m., ran upstairs and ripped into our gifts, before our parents were awake. I got a CD player, the first (and only, shockingly) I’ve ever owned. Naturally, mother and father were not pleased. My dad is kind of an emotional guy — and by emotional I mean he is prone to yelling. He is one of those weirdos who wants to witness his children’s immediate reaction to opening something he gave them, and he laid down the hammer of the gods that day. I felt guilty — for a moment. Then I went down to my room, ate candy canes and listened to Nirvana.
That CD player itself is notable because it might be the only gift I’ve ever received that I was still using by the time the next Christmas rolled around. Looking back, as much as I loved receiving presents, I apparently found them utterly disposable. Every time the latest video game platform came out, for instance, I’d beg and plead for it, then once I had it, I’d beat the shitty games that came packaged with it and, since I had no income to buy more, the thing would be gathering dust atop my television set by March. When I was 12 I got an acoustic guitar, which I never learned to play. I haven’t even gotten all the way through last year’s Alfred Hitchcock DVD boxed set. Come to think of it, the only other thing that lasted as long as the CD player was a belt one of my uncles gave me — which is ironic, because this particular uncle just mails us cheap identical presents that are obviously picked out by his wife, which we’ve made a tradition of opening simultaneously and making fun of (worst one: three ridiculously oversized electric-blue Adidas T-shirts). Normally, they end up rotting in our closets, but I recall wearing that belt for a while, before the buckle inevitably fell off.
Reflecting on all this makes me lament the fact that I’m at an age where I have to accept only practical gifts, like bathmats and TV trays. Yeah, it’s stuff I can use, seeing as I’m finally living on my own, and it’s definitely better than paying for those things myself, but without the excitement of receiving cool shit, what is there left to enjoy about Christmas? Hmm, looks like I may have to start giving after all.
