Christmas and Junk Gifts
Christmas is coming, and with it comes the junk gifts. Everyone has experienced them. My worst one was a hand-knitted wool Kleenex box cover, the sole purpose of which was to make a Kleenex box pleasing to the eye. It also made the box bulky and hard to carry around, and pulling the tissue through the slit in the top was difficult. It was a hard-to-clean, non-matching, totally useless piece of clutter, but I kept it because it was a gift.
It is “ill-mannered” to give or throw a gift away no matter how worthless it may be.: so we keep it.. ( Have you ever noticed how just about everything in a “gift shop” you could very well get along without it?) so those dreadful bookends, fancy pen sets, busts, and plaques accumulate, collect dust, and complicate life. Paperweights, for instance, has anyone ever established what and why paper has to be weighted down? Any paper on a desk long enough to be weighted down should have been acted on or thrown out. Give a paperweight long enough, and it will get scratched or broken, testifying that it is junk. But again, it is a gift, which seems to sanctify it and earn it a right to plague us for the rest of our lives.
You can’t dispose of it because the Board, the kids, the Scouts, or your sweet, caring mother (in this case, it is probably a hand-hooked rug with a picture of the Washington Monument). You will drag it around from house to house like an old buffalo hide, never used, but Mother gave it to you. Or maybe it is the razor-sharp seashell-encrusted purse that matches nothing and holds less. But your son sent it to you from the South Pacific. So your life gets “gifted” to the point of strangulation: this is when people plan fires or contemplate moving to Tahiti because they cannot face the donor if they dump it.
A gift, regardless of its value, if given sincerely has a certain sacredness. It is a concise message of love and appreciation. But we should always remember to distinguish the meaning of the gift from the gift itself. The actual gift is only a vessel to express; once it does that, it has fulfilled its function. Its message will live with you and be a part of you forever. But should you drag around the vessel after it has served its purpose? That’s like leaving the scaffolding up after a building is finished., Take it down!
You are not obligated to prolong the misery of a possession someone (however sincerely) had the poor judgment to give you. If it is a good gift give it to someone else in the family who might actually need it. “Passed for posterity” is usually accepted within a family. Take a picture of the gift, then forget where you put it. The picture is evidence that you must have appreciated it; after all, who would photograph junk? You can donate it to a religious charity; anything you rid yourself of in the name of the Lord will never be questioned. Or you can write a book about junk, like I did and it will be amazing how people will quit giving you stuff.
Happy Holidays
Schar Ward