Essayist Mary Ellen Gabriel with art of handwriting and a pen.
The year I was 4, my list for Santa included just one item: scissors. Early Christmas morning, the living room was dark and crowded with unfamiliar shapes. I pushed past the rocking horse on springs, the doll carriage, the stiffly upright plush bear. “What did Santa bring you?” my mother trilled. I turned a stricken face to the waiting camera. “No scissors,” I whispered drearily.
I haven’t changed much. Gifts are hard for me, even though (or perhaps because) I come from a family of lavish present-givers. My mother, who is in her eighties, still pores over catalogs and orders a bounty of clothing and gadgets sent to her condo in North Carolina in early December. She wraps them, packs them and has my dad carry them into the post office. A week later, I’m lugging three or four battered cardboard boxes in from the front porch, feeling bad for two reasons: one, my elderly parents exhausted themselves on our behalf, and two, nobody’s going to want what’s in these boxes.
This sounds ungrateful, and it is — after all, it’s the thought that counts! But what, exactly, is the thought? And for whom does it count?
I know I’m not alone in rejecting the commercialism of the American Christmas tradition (the one I grew up in), but pulling back is frowned upon in my family. “What do you mean, just one gift this year?” my husband, Rick, said to me earlier this evening. “We always get each other at least two.”
It’s not that gifts don’t matter to me. It’s that they matter enormously. I’ve always wanted a gift to be right — to reflect a spark of empathy, a current of understanding. To say: I see you. Not as I want you to be, but as you are. I find these moments to be rare, and these kinds of gifts hard to come by. We ought not to chase after them in mad sprees, driven by fads and seasonal ads. I can count on one hand the gifts I’ve bestowed with such an open heart, such wise insight about the person’s needs or wants, that they inspired true delight. A heavy Chief Joseph blanket I gave Rick for his poorly heated Victorian two-flat in Chicago, the year we got engaged, comes to mind. “You really do love me,” he kept saying, wrapping it around his shoulders and petting it.
But at Christmastime, under the pressure of expectations, my imagination clanks, shudders and fails. Many, if not most, of my presents land flat, like the year I bought a slew of art supplies from Artist & Craftsman Supply for my 7-year-old nephew, who lives far away. Following the “more under the tree is better” rule, I wrapped each one separately, from tiny eraser to colored pencil set to a variety of sketch pads. After opening them all, my nephew burst into tears. He’d wanted Legos or sports gear — it was my own boys, now grown, who’d loved to draw.
I completely understand my nephew’s feelings. Presents often make me feel suspicious or confused, and I’d rather have no gift at all than one that says, “I don’t know you well.” Rick takes great pleasure in giving, and many of his gifts are among my favorite things. But I always feel a slight alarm upon opening any gift that seems meant for someone more intellectual or more worldly than I.
Why, for instance, did Rick give me six books last year? Did he just go to Barnes & Noble and scoop them up from the staff recommendations table?
“I thought you’d want to read the books that got the awards this year.” Really? Why’s that?
I think about what I most love to receive from other people: an invitation to a cozy gathering. A dessert made with care. Bounty from my friend’s community garden plot. A real compliment. You know where I’m going with this. The best gifts are upwellings of love. They’re born of an impulse to share, to brighten, to ease. They are not things, but kindness itself, impossible to purchase online or in a store.
And yet, it’s complicated and ancient, these offerings we make of tangible objects. After all, things can be kept, evoking memories. One of my favorite gifts of all time is a pie server I received from my brother-in-law as a thank-you for being a member of the wedding party. It’s a slender triangle of stainless steel with a raised handle that rests on a bejeweled, magnetized cone. When in use, it’s superb for the purpose. When at rest, it resembles a fancy high-heeled slipper. A gorgeous, witty, handy object — and my brother-in-law picked it out himself, my sister told me, knowing my great love of pie-baking. Because my sister and I are dear to one another, and she was dear to him, I became dear in his eyes, too. He passed away a few years ago, and I think of him, and of her, every time I use it.
As we surge into the season, feeling harried and unequal to the task, maybe the best thing we can do is acknowledge that the perfect gift is a rare and beautiful thing. The rest — including most of the presents we buy and wrap and mail this time of year — are tokens of our yearning, imperfectly expressed, for true connection with those we love.
Mary Ellen Gabriel is a communications director at the College of Letters & Science at UW-Madison. She has published widely on the natural world.
If you are interested in writing an essay for Isthmus, query Lindaf@isthmus.com.
