It is not courtyard season. We don’t see our neighbors as often as we do during the summer, when the children play on the hill and the adults sit on benches drinking cold drinks. Now if we see a familiar face, it is bundled up under a scarf or a hat, and it is only in passing. This makes the rare occasion that much more special, when we do see someone whom we have not seen for months. Yesterday, as the temperatures neared 40 for the first time in ages, we bundled up only ever so slightly and we walked out of our door to chance upon two young friends walking home across the courtyard with a blue basket full of clean laundry.
“Hi!” we all said enthusiastically, greeting one another with excitement. “Where have you been?! We haven’t seen you in forever!” I joked. I knew where they had been. The same place I had been. Indoors.
“Do you know what I got for Christmas?” asked the girl holding the far end of the hamper.
“A blue basket full of laundry?” I asked with a smile.
“No.” she replied, unfazed. “I got an iPhone 4 and a desk.”
“Cool,” I replied, as my children stood silently behind me. “Is the desk for putting your phone on?” This elicited a few giggles, so I turned to her sister. “And did you get an iPhone 4 too?”
“No,” the first girl replied before the second could answer, “but she got an iPod touch, and three basketballs.”
“Well,” the sister said speaking up, “I already had one basketball, and then I got two more basketballs,”
“Yeah, but…” replied the first girl, launching into a confusing discussion about basketballs that I could not follow.
“And what about you guys?” I asked, turning at last to my own children in the hopes of including them in the conversation. “Do you want to tell them what you got for Christmas?” Now at this point I have to admit a bit of selfish pride, as well as some curiosity. Having spent months of time and money on crafting the perfect Christmas for my family, I was going to enjoy hearing about how appreciated it all was. Plus, now that the dust had settled, it would be good to know what the standout presents were, from a research point of view of course.
“I don’t know,” said my children.
“You don’t know what you got for Christmas?” I asked incredulously.
“Nope,” said Ruby.
“You can’t think of one single present that you received on Christmas morning, three short weeks ago?”
“I don’t know.”
“Edward? Anything?”
He shook his head as I considered sharing the information myself, but that would seem too much like bragging. So we parted ways. The girls took their laundry inside and I continued to the car with my children. But I was still thinking.
Christmas is not really about the presents anyway, you know. And if the presents were so unimportant to the children that they could not even remember a single one of them just 3 weeks later, well then why even give presents?! That’s it! That does it! Next year, NO PRESENTS! I will spend all that money on babysitters instead, and I will take my wife away for the weekend and she will appreciate it! The children can spend Christmas eating cold beans out of a can in their cupboard under the stairs!
Or is this a slight overreaction? Maybe my children were just feeling shy that day. Perhaps the kids we were speaking with are secretly notorious toy thieves, and my children did not want to reveal any tempting information to them. It’s possible that it was just cold outside and the kids wanted to get going into the car. I have no idea. I do know that they have been constantly playing with their new things since they opened them, and that I got a lot of joy out of seeing their faces on Christmas morning. Could it be that I don’t give the gifts for them, but rather for me? Is the act of giving a reward in and of itself, regardless of whether or not the gift is appreciated or acknowledged? Does putting others first, even if I don’t agree with them, like them, or approve of them, bring me peace and joy?
So maybe Christmas isn’t cancelled after all. And I have eleven months to think about it anyway.