The Pile...

Every year, my family "complains" that I buy them too many gifts for xmas.  That I spend too much money on them.

I've never really understood this, and always assumed that it came from some humble sense of insecurity they felt toward their own gifts-to-give that year.  (Which is ridiculous, of course; I have never felt anything other than overwhelmed by the volume of what we receive from them every year.)

Today, my father emailed me, and asked me, again, as he does every year, to be "modest" in my gift giving this year.  Then he said, "we know your heart is in the right place..."  Which, to me, implies that, however well-intentioned, he thinks I am doing something wrong.  When I confronted him about this, he replied:

Your heart is in the right place – you give…give…then give some more.  That’s what I mean…not wrong, just not necessary for those of us that love you and feel loved by you.  You are the most generous of us all.  Not just with your treasure Michael.  Please don’t be defensive…I love you dearly.

Dad...

I am not generous.  And this is not a sacrifice.

Every Christmas morning as a child, I remember I would come downstairs to find a pile of presents waiting for me, stacked up higher than I was tall.  That pile literally dwarfed me.  Year after year after year.

You held down two to three jobs at a time and went to school in order to provide me with that enormous pile of beautiful junk.  (Because, of course, the contents of the pile didn't matter half so much as the experience of the pile itself.)  You took out loans and lines of credit every year to afford it.  You worked hard, and you sacrificed, and you went into debt in order to give me that humungous mound of christmas treasure.

THAT is generous.  THAT is sacrifice.

I can't give anyone else that experience.  I can't even come close.  But I can try, at least.  I can do my best to give them just a fraction of that feeling of excitement and amazement that I got to grow up with.  Because that's what Christmas is to me.

Every year, I hold back, and only get half of what I want to get, or less.  I have never hurt myself financially, or gone into debt of any kind to buy gifts for my family or my friends.  I always have money left over to put away after I'm done my xmas shopping for the year.  I have never sacrificed to do this.  At least, nothing more than my time.

So, please don't think I'm being generous.  I'm only a pale mimicry of the generosity you raised me with.


ps - And I know it isn't necessary.  "Necessary" isn't the point.  If it was necessary, it wouldn't mean anything.  It is by the very fact of its un-neccesity that it is transubstantiated from a consumerist product, into a treasure that reads, "This is what you mean to me.  I Love you."