Suzanne Harrington: Doing Christmas by the book — joy to the world
When it comes to micro-aggressions and furiously masked disappointment, is there any area of human reciprocity trickier than the Christmas present? More weighted with expectation, fraught with the ghosts of terrible gifts from Christmases past? Remember the time your ex mother-in-law pointedly gave you tea towels, as if to encourage you towards housework? Or your granny, with every good intention, giving you black lingerie when you were twelve?
It’s a gift wrapped minefield. Where psychologists go on the radio to explain how giving one big present and one small present to the same person devalues the big present, for no other reason than humans are contrary and prone to awfulness. Where our sense of entitlement – not surprising, given the blanket bombing of our brains by festive marketing – means that we have all qualified as dentists when it comes to drilling gift horses in the mouth. Nothing is ever quite good enough, is it?
Look at Londoners, currently moaning about the scrawniness of the Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square. The tree has been an annual gift from Oslo since 1949. “Even Norway hates us,” they complain, wondering if Norway is exacting revenge for Brexit or Manchester United firing Ole Gunner Solksjaer. (Norway isn’t in the EU, so it must be the other one). Seriously though. It’s a free tree. Stop whining.
Not about scrolling through niche gift catalogues for those hard-to-buy-for people in your life, wondering if they will unfriend you forever if you made a donation to an irrigation project in their name, rather than trying to come up with something witty and original AGAIN. Year in, year out, with no get-out clause, no pause button.
You invariably end up second-guessing, which, if you are the parent of too-cool-for-school kidults, you will invariably get wrong. Even if you think of yourself as down with the kids, chances are the kids will fundamentally disagree, and pity you as a clueless old bat who has presented them with something irrevocably naff, so that they feel a bit sorry for you because you tried so hard. Great. Don’t worry kids, here’s the receipt. Next Christmas you can help fund that irrigation project.
If only we did Jolabokaflod instead. Jolabokaflod is Icelandic for book flood – on Christmas Eve, everyone in Iceland gets a book, and stays home reading it with a hot chocolate. Imagine if this became a thing everywhere. Instead of going bald from Christmas gifting stress, we’d all just give each other book tokens. That way we would all get to choose the right book for ourselves, and everyone would be happy, and better read. No returns, no gift receipts, no unwanted crap. No brain-racking, overspending, or doing a pretend-happy face on opening floral tea towels – just a fat book and a brimming mug of hot chocolate. Imagine the reaction of your kids though. The outraged howls of SCROOOOOOGE echoing through the house. Imagine your glee.
