It's Friday, Issue #122
I hate a gift guide
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Everyone these days posts a Gift Guide. After a while you’ve seen a hundred beautiful dish towels and fifteen sweet wooden tops and you’re about to buy a candle shaped like a Scottish Terrier and you don’t even know why or for whom. Would anyone want this gardening hose? Who can I get this compass for? Why am I looking at this thousand dollar hoop skirt?
Sometimes when I read Gift Guides I feel the hegemony of the Perfect American Family haunting us all. Like, does your mom actually wear those chic scarves? Are you playing a family game of flag football on Thanksgiving? Get away from me, you WASPs!
Gift Guides bother me because, while I’ve gotten many good ideas from them, they remind me that yet another timeless ritual has been rendered frictionless by the internet.
Of course I don’t want everything to be fraught and full of effort, but I also don’t want everything to be easy. It almost feels like cheating to find something off a list that someone else wrote, then order it online to be delivered to your house, and then hand it to the receiver. Too smooth!
The act of procuring a gift for someone should require some seeking, a glimmer of insecurity followed by a deeper consideration of the person’s identity, their desires and needs. It’s hard to get someone a great gift; usually, presents don’t hit the mark, but when they do, wow, it’s the warmest feeling of You get me.
The proliferation of the gift guide has also escalated expectations. If things are so easy to procure, if every type of person is represented, well then, it’s on you if you give someone a ho-hum gift!
I sort of want everything to get a little basic again. I’m giving you some plaid pajama pants and you’re giving me a book. Happy Holidays!
Also, once again, I must remind everyone: THE WORD “GIFT” IS NOT A VERB UNLESS YOU’RE DOING YOUR TAXES. You give someone a gift. You don’t gift them anything. Please, for the love of all that is beautiful and true, refrain from this word choice!
With that, here are my Anti-Gift Guide Gift Recommendations, along with a list of what my own kids are requesting for the holidays…