Today we continue our Holiday Season Extravaganza.  Between now and December 25, we will share what it means to celebrate the holidays — Life in Pencil style.

Posted by Elizabeth

“This year, appreciation may be the best gift of all.”  Or at least that’s the case according to a new Hallmark commercial.

According to yesterday’s New York Times article, “Fewer Gifts and Frills Are Expected in a Rough Economy,” people are giving less this year, and the gifts they are giving are decidedly simpler, drawing on homemade goodies or gifts to be enjoyed at home, where we’re apparently spending more time than ever these days.  Some are forgoing gift-giving altogether, sending greeting cards instead.  While many are touting this “return to simplicity” as the new normal, most are dubious that, once the economic situation rebounds, this more conscious consumerism will quickly fall by the wayside.  And that is a shame, because, as the article states, “while all that cutting back is good for consumers’ bank accounts, many insist it is even better for their souls.”

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve never been a big gift giver, and my reasons aren’t grounded in any sort of moral or financial reasoning.  Rather, the act of heaping on gifts doesn’t feed my soul.  I find that I – and the receiver – am generally happier with one well-selected gift, a gift that, I hope, is a reflection of that person.  Our mothers told us, “It’s the thought that counts.”  But we’ve all been in a situation where we’ve held a gift in our hands and thought, “This person doesn’t know me at all.  There was no thought or care put into this.”  I’m not concerned with whether a gift is homemade or store-bought, simple or extravagant – only that it be soulful, that it stirs something in me, no matter how small.

I’m not going to tell you a sob story about how I never had any cheery packages under the Christmas tree, or how I search the world over for the perfect gift whose every detail must be imbued with meaning, because none of those things would be true.  I will say, however, that opening gifts on Christmas morning was an exceedingly long-winded affair in my family.  Not because there were so many people (there were only three of us), or because there were mountains of gifts (I’d estimate our household was pretty average).  It was because my parents insisted that we pay attention to the process of gift opening, that we be conscious of what we were receiving.

We opened one gift at a time.  Before the paper was even torn, there was a great deal of speculation as to the contents of the package.  Boxes were tumbled in our hands, testing for weight, a sophisticated mental cross-check occurring between the physical specimen and the gift list.  When the paper was touched – exuberant ripping for me, careful unfolding for my dad – and the box finally revealed, there was a great debate.  Do you think it’s what the box really says it is, or something else? Finally, the gift was unveiled.  That’s when the admiration began.  Oh wow, this is just what I wanted.  You remembered!  You know what I’m going to use this for? Once the gift had been given sufficient attention, two words were required before moving onto the next:  Thank you.

Of course, sometimes this process became a bit much.  My dad was notorious for reading the barcode on the packages, which caused me to roll my eyes and shriek, “Just open it, Dad!”  And every year my father picked up the smallest package under the tree, shook it lightly, held it to his forehead a la Johnny Carson’s The Great Karnak, and declared, “These must be the keys to my new motorboat.”  My dad made this same joke every year.  We all knew there would never be a motorboat – in fact, there would never be anything that extravagant under the Christmas tree, because that’s just not how gift-giving went in our family.  As an adult, I am grateful to have been taught this lesson about gratitude and appreciation.  No matter who I receive a gift from, I find myself going through a truncated version of this process that was passed down to me from my parents.  I’ll never forget the first Christmas I spent with Maikael’s family, where the gifts were devoured with the ferocity of a whirling dervish, the fun over in a matter of minutes.  The next year, I insisted we take turns.

For the first time, I made the vast majority of my Christmas gifts this year.  I created my own festive gift baskets with items I canned from the fruits of my garden this past summer.  Some people received jewel-like jars of organic tomato sauce, nestled in curls of paper with a rustic clutch of spaghetti and a bottle of favored wine, a homey dinner for two.  (There is nothing more soulless, in my mind, than a pre-packaged gift basket, convenient but utterly lacking in charm and personality.)  Others received jars of green tomato-orange jam, a sweet-tart marmalade that my friend, Atarah, gave me the recipe to when I was up to my ears in green tomatoes this fall.  They are simple gifts, not at all extravagant, but I felt a stirring in my soul when I handed over the baskets to the people on my gift list.  And I hope they felt that, too.

Have you cut down your gift list this year?  Are the types of gifts you’re giving different than the past?  How does the opening of gifts go in your house?