Relative Something

What if they held  a winter, and nobody came? Today marks the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere. The daylight doesn’t get any shorter than this. Kind of inspires a reason to hold a celebration, doesn’t it? If you aren’t ready for that yet, don’t fret, in four days it will be Christmas. You can celebrate then.

The best part of Christmas is the giving of gifts, and the best part of giving is surprise. The person receiving and the person giving both get fueled by it. Yet, we have this natural tendency to seek the information that spoils the surprise. People will go to great lengths to hide and greater lengths to seek the packages brought home this time of year. I know someone who claimed he hid his wife’s gifts in the oven because it is one place she would never look. I tend to try the obvious and hide things in plain sight. If it doesn’t look hidden, it must not be something that needs to be hidden. Why investigate something left out in the open? This technique benefits by having a lot of clutter around in the first place, in order to make the new additions blend in.

My brother-in-law and I long ago discarded the surprise aspect of gift exchange in the family name-draw routine and deviously scheme ways to end up with each other’s name. Then, we ask what the other wants and get that very item. No muss, no fuss. But both have always found a way to doctor it up a bit, because even as we are busy navigating around the whole ‘what-gift-to-surprise-them-with’ dilemma, we still can’t overcome that connection to the surprise aspect of gift exchange.

I am also quite fond of anonymous gift giving. There’s nothing like inventing a fat man that inexplicably navigates a chimney to deliver gifts to cover up that it was you. Good luck with that one.

Happy Winter everyone! Enjoy the celebrations.