Rambling: Post-holiday gift thoughts

Gifts.

The more I declutter, the more I'm bothered by gifts. That is, by lots of routine gifts given by lots of people to lots of other people. Loot. Piles of boxes. As I try to develop a mindset where I seriously consider whether my stuff earns its space, the giving and receiving of lots of loot seems more and more like a bad thing.

It's not that I dislike the idea of gifts. I love the idea of gifts. I just looked at a few pictures of piles of Christmas gifts, and the little-kid Ooh! reaction kicked in. But the reality, in which I search frantically for an object to give someone, settle for something that will Do, pay too much to have it shipped, try not to think about how soon it may land in a garage sale, and repeat the whole process for a dozen more people before Christmas arrives, often doesn't work well.

It means that I burn a lot of money, spend a lot of anxiety-filled time, and have no assurance that anyone will be pleased. And I suspect that a whole lot of other people have the same problem. We could be doing something else with all that - baking cookies, socializing, buying heifers or ducks across the world, or all three. Yes, I realize that there are no new thoughts here, but, well, I'm outlining my thoughts anyway.

Sure, sometimes a gift is perfect. Sometimes I find the perfect, sparkling, shiny thing for someone, something that they'll admire and enjoy and use, perhaps even thinking of me as they do so. But it's rare that I find anything like that for more than one or two people per holiday.

Why isn't it OK to just give those people the perfect shiny things, and send everybody else a card, in the hope that over the years everybody will come up occasionally in the Shiny Gift lottery?

I suppose it's because gifts really are gestures, in the end. Even when they're not good gifts, they're communication. Expensive, bulky, express-mail-conveyed communication that the gift recipient is important enough to us to be acknowledged on the holiday.

So. The problem of gifts. Every year as Christmas approaches, I wish that I'd declared that we won't be giving gifts this year, or that we'll be giving something modest, like a paperback or some family snapshots. Every year I conclude that I'm too late, because those organized people who buy their gifts in June would end up being punished for their organization, and that's not really fair.

This year, I think that February should be early enough. Anyone organized enough to buy next year's Christmas gifts in January is organized enough to think of someone else to give them to. Or if they don't, they'll be amply warned that it's not going to be an even gift exchange.

So maybe this will be the year.

Photo: By Lainey Powell. Wikimedia Commons.