This is going to sound awful but…..Gift giving has ruined Christmas for me. Not because I’m a selfish heartless jerk. I’m not selfish.. or heartless. Jerk? Maybe…..I just hate the pressure.
Sure, I put it on myself, but I’m so afraid of not getting the perfect gift that it causes me great stress.. And since I now, somehow, have been given the responsibility (by a very humorous God) of raising two children of my own, that pressure has multiplied tenfold.
I. Hate. Gift. Giving.
Almost as bad as I hate gift RECEIVING. How do I act when I open it? What if I hate it? Can they tell? Everyone is looking at me! Is there a giftophobia?
Whatever the reason….it takes away from the holiday …one of the most important of the year for me and my family.
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I was thinking back today on all of the presents I’ve ever received. Wouldn’t you love to see your lifetime list? Anyway, with all the pressure I now put on myself to make my kids’ Christmas perfect…to be honest? I only really remember a handful of gifts my parents ever gave me..
The red bike under the tree at the age of 6 or so was a biggie….The loud and completely pointless electric football game that just vibrated players all over the place was another. Or a few years later the Matel football game where you had four buttons and you had to maneuver a blip of red light through 5 other blips on a screen that was one inch by maybe four. I played that for days….and days….and days……
My favorite of all time though? The Bruce Springsteen Live Box Set….that my mom hid until I was done opening gifts because she KNEW that was all I wanted. If you remember my aforementioned gift receiving phobia ….you know that was a tough one to cover up for a cruel minute or so…thanks mom.
Bet really….its NOT the thought of the gifts that I received over the years that get me choked up and teary eyed this time of year, especially when I remember my mom …..No, it wasn’t the gifts….It WAS my mom that was Christmas to me.
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Carol Macioce LIVED for Christmas. If you could only have seen her face when she made hundreds and hundreds of cookies every year (20 – 30 different kinds..EVERY year.)
Or just watched her decorate the house and put up her ancient manger set her own grandmother brought back from Europe decades earlier.
Or heard her excitedly explain EVERY damn gift she ever gave…. “I thought, ya know, since you love the color green…and well….your always complaining about only having the one sweater…” as I hold up the bright green Cosby sweater complete with patches of leather sewn in very fashionable places on the front…smiling so I accept the gift correctly. All the while I’m imagining the scores of kids at school in the hall writhing on the ground in laughter as I take off my coat to reveal “my gift”.
My mom even came up with ways to create her own wrapping for us….three different kinds of course for my two brothers and me….One year the presents were wrapped in black or gold with the numbers of our favorite players on them.
My mom WAS Christmas to me.
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The first Christmas gift I ever gave was to my mother at the age of five. It was a shark necklace. (I bought it at the school’s Santa Workshop – with money she gave me of course.) This thing was HUGE. Something Jacques Cousteau might wear. I was so excited to give it to her…..and she cried like I handed her a diamond ring – blessed by the pope. ….She wore that freakin thing EVERY Christmas for years. My own kids saw it on her at one of the last family Christmas parties she ever attended before she passed. She was still so proud of it even then, and loved telling the story of opening it to anyone who would listen.
Not quite a shark necklace but maybe the best gift giving moment ever under the roof of my childhood home (which was sold almost a year ago this month) was when we gave my mother Maggie.
About a month or so before that Christmas our dog of 12 years, Sugar, was put to sleep while I was at college. My father, who had to take her to the vet, vowed never to get another pet. Experiencing that kind of hurt and emotion was not something my dad wanted to do ever again so we were told not to even think of bringing home another dog.
That Christmas….I did anyway. My brothers and I presented her the gift on Christmas Eve. My father didn’t speak to me for a good week.
Without a seconds thought she named the puppy Maggie ….after the “Three Magi” that presented gifts to Jesus at his birth…..Damon, Justin, and I being likened to the three kings of course.
Maggie and my mom were the best of friends for the next seventeen years. Saying good bye to Maggie and then my mom within a few years of each other recently were two of the most difficult moments of my life to date. Maggie’s stone is next to my mom’s in Mt.Carmel Cemetery
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Those memories are Christmas. The pressure I put on myself is the pressure to duplicate the love and joy that giving and receiving gifts brought to my mother. Now that my mom is gone there is a huge hole in my heart this month…but it is a hole I wouldn’t trade for the world. It sounds strange but I want my kids to someday feel the same thing. I want to be remembered in the same way…and I constantly feel I fail at achieving this….thus my frustration.
My grandparents named my mom Carol because being born on September 25th she was probably
conceived at Christmas (no not something I wanted to think of either…) But a name was never more perfect for a human being ever born on this earth. Carol Macioce WAS Christmas and personified “gift giving” not just during Christmas but during her entire life.
SHE was a “gift”. Thanks mom for the love you put into this holiday and for the irreplaceable memories I now have. Christmases just aren’t the same….but we try.
Still not a big fan of the Springsteen Box set prank….we’ll have to talk about that someday. I love you.
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