When Your Presence Is Not Presents Enough

"I don't think most 26-year-olds would know that thing is meant for holding garlic," said my husband.

"They wouldn't?" I asked. I looked at the hand-made pottery and furrowed my brow. "What about this?" I picked up a beautiful, blue and purple glazed serving dish, and caressed its smooth loveliness.

"I don't know," he said, hesitating, "I don't think most 26-year-olds who live in the city cook."

I sighed in frustration, "Well, the wedding's this weekend, we've got to get them something. What do you suggest?"

"Cash."

The conversation got me thinking about the joys, terrors, and potential pitfalls of giving gifts.
For there are many social guidelines for gift-giving, but are there really any hard and fast rules?
Some people say "I don't want anything" and really mean it. Others are just testing you. Some people are genuinely pleased to receive a gift, whatever it is, while others are happy only if it is something they want, while still others couldn't care less about the whole process.

I think it's important that our motives be true:

If someone you know genuinely does not want a gift, but you insist on getting them one anyway, who is that gift really for? Or maybe you know someone who wants something, but it's not in your taste so you get them something else. Maybe you are so afraid of making a mistake you don't even bother.

It's a tricky business.

It didn't take my husband and I long to realize that we're on opposite spectrums of the gift-giving scale.

He's not a gift-guy. He doesn't appreciate presents for himself, he detests the societal pressure to give gifts at prescribed occasions, and he thinks the commerce of gift-giving (taking wine to a dinner party, for instance) is at best stuffy, and at worse a cheap attempt to buy friendship.

I, on the other hand, LOVE giving and receiving gifts. I am thrilled when I have found just the right thing for somebody. I feel loved and cherished when opening something, anything, given to me by someone who cared enough to think of me.

Suffice it to say, this combination doesn't always work well.
Christmas can be dicey.

"I want a present this Christmas," I'll say.

"I don't want anything," he'll answer.

Some years we fail each other, usually when we both insist that our way is the right one.

But the best years are when we both succeed in truly honouring the other's wishes, despite our own personal views and desires.

Because, really, isn't this what gift-giving is all about?