Gifted necessities

One of the reasons why I hated having to make up a Christmas wish list every year as a child was that not only did my parents insist on me making up one, they were also fundamentally opposed to giving anything as a gift for Christmas that was even remotely useful or practical. To be fair, the things I needed, I got, but not for Christmas. As if wishing for a warm coat, or even some college textbooks, were an obscenity, while wishing for some utterly useless stuff  like another plush teddy wasn´t.
But, for many people besides my parents, Christmas gifts are not supposed to be sensible or practical, just pretty, or cute, or surprising. Picking out something that the recipient really needs and will use seems so- un-romantic by comparison.
What that means is that most of these pretty, cute and surprising things are clutter as soon as they enter the house.
Even worse is the "but there must be presents or it ain´t Christmas"-mindset that leads the giver to spend hard-earned money on -or even go into debt for- things that the recipient neither needs nor wants.
Economically, in that case you give away something of no value to the recipient and get back something of no value to you, meaning that you just sold the family finances short by the price of two pieces of clutter.

In my own family, I don´t ever want such things to happen.
The premise is simple: I do not ever want to give or receive a present just so that a present is given, which means that yes, Christmas with no presents at all would be perfectly fine with me.
On the other hand, to me, it is perfectly acceptable to pick out something you need and can use and chose that to be your Christmas wish.
So, for our grown-up Christmas, we will perhaps get some items we can use and put them benath the tree,or rather, in front of it  but we won´t take home any additional clutter.

Looking at those wish-inducing catalogues that make letterboxes overflow in December, what I have realized this year is that they are marketing a lot of things as "special Christmas sets" that are packaged to look most impressive under a tree (think ten colored-enamel matching pots of which, at most, four will see regular use, or that twenty-knife block for someone whose most-used cooking utensil is a can opener). Such things give the impression of being practical and useful, but they are also a form of clutter if the recipient doesn´t  need or use them. 
The positive thing about this is that by applying the rule of necessity to any offer in those catalogues, I have, once more, reminded myself that our household is, by now, so well-equipped that we really need, at this point in time, nothing new in the way of kitchen utensils or such, and very little in the way of anything else, and that, if I disengage the purchases from the holidays, I may even profit from some hefty after-holiday discounts on the things my family really needs. And that is better than having to wrap or unwrap them in time for Christmas.


Julia