Overdone

This Christmas stuff is crazy.

I have to tell you, this is nothing new.

Back around 1981, when Xman and his brother had reached detente after nearly a decade of cold war, Mike and Mary Lou had us over to their house for dinner a couple of days before Christmas.

They lived in Summit, a very, very posh 'burb. Even in 1981, houses were going for a cool mill.

I had been frantically shopping, trying to pick up a nice little something for them (a bottle of wine they would no doubt use for vinegar) and for their kids, The Boy age 6 and The Girl, age about a year.

We were shown into the living room where the tree was. For twelve feet around the Christmas tree, there were packages piled two feet deep. These were offerings from underlings and jostling equals and etiquette demanded that not just Mike and Mary Lou but the kids receive presents, too. These were from people who made Christmas bonuses of $200,000 at a time when Xman was earning about $20,000 a year and I was lucky to pull in half that.

I nearly tossed our presents onto the heap and walked away. I realized it was pointless, absolutely pointless, to try to compete with that.

I remembered my own family Christmases and what bliss it was to get a tiny vial of kid perfume from Aunt Ruth or a single 45 rpm record from my cousin Sookie.

Since then, I've taken different approaches in buying Christmas presents.

There was the Year of the Homemade, which was greeted with rapture, followed by the Second Year of the Homemade, which was greeted with no rapture at all but instead a kind of resentment.

Before this, there were the Luxury Years, one big-ticket item that left the recipient speechless.

2004 was a splurge year, when I worked for Fezziwig Co. This was again greeted with rapture.

2005 saw me in de po'house again, giving the equivalent of sticks wrapped with string.

2006 was the year of No Gifts At All. Not good. I might have saved money, but it felt beyond stingey and not getting any presents on Christmas hurt badly.

This year, I am giving little things. I have a limit. I've stuck to it.

I was talking to T, Little T's mom. Little T's birthday is coming up and so of course I bought her a trinket for her birthday. "Oh, Gawd, Miss Becs, don't get that kid a thing. She got so much stuff for her birthday party that I made sure she didn't even get it all. I gave some to the church. She didn't miss it because she's got so much stuff that she never even knew it was there to begin with."

Well, it was too late. I'd already bought Little T something for her birthday and something for Christmas.

I spent part of yesterday trying to buy a DVD copy of "The Bishop's Wife". I love Dudley's sermon near the end. Even then, he's talking about how Christmas is overdone. He talks about giving Uncle Harry a book he's been wanting to read, of giving someone a pair of socks or a tie and I think, to me, that sounds about right.

This Christmas madness has only been intensifying over the years and I think I may have finally found my way of coping with it. Not overdone, not underdone, but, I hope, just right.

Oh, and a pair of SmartWool socks would not be unwelcome chez Becs...