It's finally December, which means Christmas is approaching! Which, of course, is a great thing because I happen to love this time of year. I love how the holiday cheer always brings families together. How no matter how hard our lives are going we always take a break just to get together, even for a few hours, and have a nice dinner. But I must admit it's a rather stressful month as well. Aside from worry about final exams there comes the stress of buying gifts for people. Finding that perfect gift that's both practical yet thoughtful is challenging. Particularly if they're people whom you hold an immense amount of gratitude for that no gift could ever adequately express your emotions. (Darn you aunt and uncle!!!) And it doesn't help that we are old enough that handmade crayon portraits of the family just don't cut it anymore.
So it got me to thinking. Maybe the government should make it mandatory for all people to have a Christmas list attached to the back of their shirts for the month of December. You know, so us worker bees can spend less of our time running from mall to mall the week before Christmas and the gift recipients can avoid wasting time in those long after the holiday exchange the gift that was oh so nice but not what I wanted lines. I'm telling you, it's a brilliant plan. But I guess that would defeat the whole purpose of the gift being personal. Darn human relationships and their desire to be sentimental.
Everyone will claim that any gift is fine because "it's the thought that counts". And that's true, to some extent. But in reality it's more along the lines of "it's the the thought that counts as long as it isn't something so expensive you're trying to buy my affections or something so cheap you don't appreciate my affections or something so totally out there that you're going to leave me wondering 'so...what exactly is this supposed to do?'".
In any case this all started when I was trying to think of the perfect gift for my aunt and uncle. I'm thinking about a Belgium waffle maker since we always do family breakfasts on the weekends but then I'm wondering if that's a bit too impersonal. So I'm considering possibly making a little gift basket with like passes to a spa, restaurant certificate, movies, a 'babysit for free' pass, etc. so that they can have a 'date' one weekend or a weekend of relaxation. But I don't know. AGH!!! Gifts are hard!
...but you know...it is totally worth it when you do wind up getting them something great. Guess I better get cracking. These perfect gifts don't find themselves.