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?
