Tis christmas eve and all round the world kids are impatiently waiting for the morrow. I've just gotten back from my least favorite christmas tradition - dinner at Oma's. Oma is my German grandmother and Germans traditionally have a whole family gathering on christmas eve followed by an intimate meeting on Christmas day with just their immediate family. So far so good, the idea is sound.
It all falls down when you factor in the fact that I loathe Oma and I don't think to much of most my other relations on that side. My personal christmas tradition is to spend most of christmas eve feeling tetchy, bitter and resentful. I don't enjoy the company of many of my relations and I resent being forced to spend time with them pretty much against my will.
I can usually justify going anywhere for free food, but the majority of the food and organization that goes into the evening is my own mother's. My direct family (Mum, Dad, Brother and his Fiance) are the ones who set things up, and we usually end up cleaning things up as well, so as you can see, there isn't exactly much in it for me.
Except for presents you say. Well yes, presents are involved. However they are usually disappointing. Oma is not very familiar with my tastes and preferences (she gave me a cheap spinning top for my 18th...) so I can't really count on anything much. One uncle can be relied on to give me something useful, the other is usually good for some food. My Aunt lives in WA so she doesn't take part.
Naturally, I approached this year with trepidation (along with the usually tetchiness and irritability) only to be handed a card from Oma which contained a slip of paper informing me I had received the gift of love. Apparently she had made a donation to charity on my behalf and I was the proud recipient of the gift of love.
My problems with this are fairly simple:
A: She doesn't care much for me and I certainly do not care much for her.
B: I'd spent hours laboring over a hot stove to produce my contribution to the hampers my own family gives everyone else, including her.
C: I'm a material kind of guy and I like to have something tangible for christmas,
and D: If I want to donate to charity, I'll donate on my own behalf thank you very much.
I have nothing against charity, but I'd prefer to have my money go to a non-religious institution. I think help is important, but not at the cost of being converted or forced to listen to preaching. If she had asked me the charity I'd donate to, I'd have chosen a completely different one, preferably one involving goats. (I kinda like the idea of financing a village goat)
The thing is that the whole giving to charity as a gift thing unbalances the complex web of gift giving which exists. I mean, we all like to receive about as much as we give, right? So now we are giving more because not only are we giving away gifts to others, we're also giving out own gift away to people we've never met.
Then we get to the whole unfairness and favoritism angle. Only those over 18 got the charity card. The youngsters got presents. Plus Oma's sons all got presents, but their spouses (ie: my Mum, my Uncle's wife) got the charity card. Favoritism is normal for Oma, but this was one step further.
Okay, so all of the above galls me, but here's the big one: if she had consulted with us and we'd all agreed to do this, I'd have been happy to. I'm not mad about exhanging gifts with these people, I don't know them much, and I don't care for many of them very much either. If we all jut donated to charity instead of giving gifts, I'd be happy. But she never asked us, she just did it, leaving us exchanging and receiving gifts. Thus, she ended up receiving more tangible icons of christmas than we did.
it just seems to me plain rude to do this kind of thing without consultation. Which would you rather have, a Goat, or a piece of paper saying your Grandmother gave your goat to the poor on your behalf? I don't think anyone else has the right to give another's goat to charity without asking first.
Now if you will excuse me, I have to trek into the red center and re-poses my goat.
The gift of love apparently.