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Tis' The Season

© Brenda

The holiday season is upon us. For most, that means family and friends, too much to eat, way too much to drink. Gifts, mistletoe, your office Christmas party where you drunkenly tell someone you’ve had a crush on them since May (not that I’VE ever done that, mind you). People seem brighter, cheerier, a little more likely to give the Salvation Army guy a handful of coins.

Gifts. It’s a big part of the season, whether or not we want to admit it. Some people buy theirs year-round, planning ahead, seeing items they know so-and-so would just LOVE. They have a closet full of this stuff. They secretly want to be Martha Stewart.

Not I. I haven’t even started buying gifts yet. I dread the thought of fighting Dallas traffic and hitting the malls where, quite frankly, the holiday spirit doesn’t seem to exist. I just can’t bring myself to do it.

Well, if I am honest, I have thought about it before now, I have actually purchased one gift. The ill-fated (or so I thought) relationship with the BF survived his crisis the last two weeks (men are so weird sometimes). I put off the actual purchasing of a Christmas gift to see if we would make it to December 15th. Now I was stuck with not much time and no idea what the hell to get him. And paying exorbitant shipping fees to get it here in time.

We’ve been together for almost a year and a half. He’s the type to buy me silly little gifts (usually with some inside joke as the theme) all the time for no reason at all. He shops for absolutely everyone at Christmas. He also has a lot more money than I do. I was worried.

While I won’t say what I finally got him (he does, infrequently, read this column), I will say that buying a gift for him – or anyone else I’ve ever been involved with – has always been fraught with indecision, emotion and worry. What you give someone you are sleeping with says quite a bit.

Safe Gifts

A gift certificate is always safe. It’s something they can use to get themselves what they really want. It also says, “I didn’t want to spend any time at all thinking about what you might like and instead just spent the money to absolve myself of any guilt.” Don’t get me wrong – I LOVE gift certificates. My parents give them every year. Usually Barnes and Noble, and I go buy yet another two or three chick-lit novels and think, “Great, I got to read this earlier than I thought I would since I’m so broke from Christmas shopping.” But my mother also usually pays attention to what I said I liked back in July, when we were looking at towels and some fabric caught my eye and then on Christmas day, I end up with a homemade throw and four pillows to match, all of the fabric I’d seen and truly forgotten.

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