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| A Christmas Wishlist 2005, December 14 - 10:49 a.m.
Christmas is upon me. Tomorrow I get paid and I can soon begin the horrors of Christmas shopping. My dad wants to forgo gift-giving this year. He wants to give Jamie and I money. I've been feeling bothered by it so I wrote Jamie this e-mail: Hey Jamie So, Pa wants to not give presents this year. It seems every year he has present problems. He either gets so overworked and over-stressed about it that he gets angry, or he tries to give us exactly the same stuff that one of doesn't want or need in an effort to be as fair as possible, or this sort of thing where he wants to give money. Cripes. If he spent less and just gave us something meaningful or thoughful, you know? That would make me happy. He said stuff about the materialism of Christmas but giving money "so we can go out on Boxing day and buy more" is the ultimate materialistic thing. I can't seem to get him to understand you and I don't care how MUCH we get. I mean, really. Haven't we, from Day 1, always been told not to expect too much? And haven't, every year, we been fine with whatever we've been given? No matter how much or how little? He doesn't get that we don't care if he spends more on one than the other or if he spends less than the year before or anything like that. You and I have never compared our presents or Christmases. We're just happy with the gift giving, doing both giving and recieving. I want to give gifts. I enjoy watching someone open something I've picked out for them. It feels good and it's been a part of our Christmases since we've been born. I don't want to deny ourselves a tradition I enjoy. I like the gift exchange. It feels cold to say that we should do away with it because it's stressful. It wouldn't be stressful for him if he'd just chill and realize that we don't have this vision of "perfect Dad" making the perfect Christmas and it's not a major heartache for us if we don't have this "perfect Christmas" with "perfect presents" and lots of them. Where did this idea come from anyway? We can just be a family that has a quiet Christmas eve in a cozy house and we can exchange a small amount of presents and be happy to do so because it's a fun and loving thing to do. And... I mean, when Mom died we kind of started doing things differently with dad, you know? Like, we started opening presents Christmas Eve and sleeping in Christmas morning and having a big breakfast as the main attraction. I really like that whole deal. It was like we were evolving as a family. So I want to keep up with that and keep it as a tradition. I don't know... This is a long e-mail, I know. I just wanted to let you know how I felt about what Dad's been saying. And also, I will be bringing Christmas presents, the same as every year no matter what gets decided. If I (or we, if you agree) have to be the ones to keep up family traditions then that is what will happen. I think I'll send a copy of this e-mail to dad because it pretty much says exactly how I feel. Thank You - 2006, June 7
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