(From the Janesville Messenger, 12-16-07)
Not that you need any more reminders, but there are eight shopping days left until Christmas.
Gift giving is going to be easy this year at our house. My wife, my son and I are getting new bicycles. My daughter is getting her class ring. End of story.
That probably sounds almost Scrooge-like in that there are no surprises, no presents under the tree, no toys sticking out of stockings or any of the traditional Santa-on-Christmas-morning rituals.
I must admit to getting cynical about the whole gift-giving aspect of Christmas. As our families have grown, we have gotten into the less-financially-straining act of drawing names among the siblings, siblings-in-law and siblings’ children to determine who is getting whom a gift. But over time, even that has lost its allure, and the past couple of years, I opted out of my family’s name-drawing gift routine. That probably sounds even more Scrooge-like, but gift giving is not what I treasure at Christmas.
What I do treasure is the fact that our entire family is together, talking, laughing, and eating much more than we should. My favorite part of Christmas with my family is sitting around the table after lunch just conversing, telling jokes and stories. Give me four hours of that and I’m a happy man.
So am I anti-gift? Get serious. However, I do believe the best gifts are not the ones purchased because the retail community has been reminding you for six months that December 25 is coming, or the ones you get because you’ve survived another planetary orbit around the sun. The best gifts are the ones that are unexpected, genuine, heartfelt and meaningful.
A couple of months ago, at the end of a Friday afternoon, I was packing up and ready to leave work for the weekend. I had worked a lot of stressful hours that week, and I couldn’t wait to go home and decompress for two days.
As I was logging off my computer, my phone rang. I hesitated for about 10 seconds, debating about whether I wanted to take the call or just split. With a sigh, I answered the phone. The voice on the other end of the line turned out to be a woman calling from Denver, Colorado, interested in purchasing space on one of my company’s billboards in Madison.
This woman was not with an advertising agency or company, but a small organization that simply wanted to direct certain individuals to a certain web site. The concept of billboards and how to use one was totally foreign to her, so I needed to take a good deal of time educating her.
We ended up spending 45 minutes on the phone together, primarily trying to figure out how we could present her message in such a way that it would be communicated effectively on a billboard. Outdoor Advertising 101 dictates that the message should be brief, but nothing about what she wanted to convey was brief. Her first idea was a paragraph of text, which would have been impossible to read from a moving vehicle. Even her web site address wasn’t nice and short. Rather than a billboard-friendly address like readlyke.com, it was a long jumble of hyphens and slashes.
One never likes to turn down business – she was certainly ready and willing to buy – but I led her to the conclusion that this wasn’t a good use of her money. She was a very pleasant person and before we ended our call, she asked if I was a sports fan. She said she was a huge Colorado Rockies baseball fan, and wanted to express her thanks to everyone in Wisconsin because had our Brewers not won their final two games against Colorado’s rival, the Rockies would not have made the playoffs and ended up in the World Series. On that jovial note, the conversation finished up and I left the office for home, a good deal later than I had intended.
I figured that was the end of that, until about a week later when a bulging envelope with a Denver return address appeared in my mailbox at work. As I opened the handwritten card inside, two football cards in plastic sleeves fell out of the envelope.
In her note, she wrote that she had gone to a sports collectible store the day after we spoke. On the way, she said, “I noticed a billboard with more information than I could read and realized that you could have sold me a nearly worthless billboard and didn't do so.”
“Although I've never lived in Wisconsin, I know that the Packers are almost a religion there. If you have a son, I thought this Brett Favre rookie card might be worth something some day.”
Not only did she send a football card from Favre’s rookie season with the Atlanta Falcons, but a card from the third of his three straight seasons when he was honored as the NFL’s Most Valuable Player. Needless to say, my son was thrilled. And she’s right; the rookie card will probably be worth a lot in the future. I can’t imagine it was inexpensive now.
That gift, which came out of nowhere, completely unexpected and uncalled for, genuinely touched me. It was as inspiring as it was pleasing.
So as we sit by the tree and unwrap our presents this Christmas, let’s not forget the other 364 days when someone could be moved by a heartfelt, thoughtful gift.
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Living in Santa Nation
(From the Janesville Messenger, 12-2-07)
Americans like Christmas. Christmas is family, and presents, and stockings hung by the fireplace, and good food and everything else that we like. We like it so much we want to celebrate it year-round. So every year, it seems, we push the official start of Christmas further and further up.
Remember when the official start of the Christmas season was the appearance of Santa at the very end of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade on TV? No more. I saw retail Christmas displays by summer this year. Santa arrives at stores and radio stations switch to all-Christmas music long before Thanksgiving. Some folks had their outdoor Christmas lights up – and lit – before Halloween this year. It’s a weird juxtaposition, ghosts and goblins and gravestones in yards alongside icicle lights. We should just call the season Hallowistmas. Several years ago, when Hollywood came out with “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” a film about Halloween spirits taking over Christmas from Santa Claus, they didn’t realize how clairvoyant they were regarding the entangling of the holidays.
In the meantime, Thanksgiving has almost become a forgotten holiday. You don’t see many decorations with turkeys and Pilgrims anymore. It’s a shame, because its purpose and meaning shouldn’t be forgotten.
I have always personally put my foot down about not decorating our home before Thanksgiving. This year, however, we had little choice due to a commitment we made to MACCIT, Milton’s chamber of commerce.
Each year, the chamber does a “Christmas house walk” fundraiser featuring historic homes with their Christmas decorations. For several years, we have been asked to be one of the featured homes. After finishing several remodeling projects, we decided the time was finally right to say yes. My wife loves to have our home decorated for Christmas anyway, so giving her carte blanche for this event is like giving liquor store keys to an alcoholic.
The event takes place on the issue date of this publication, Sunday, December 2. Normally, that’s about the time we’re getting our tree and starting the decorating. This year, it was the end date for completion, so our preparation began very early.
I stuck to my guns and refused to put the icicle lights on the front of the house until after Thanksgiving. But that made little difference when the front lamppost and railings were decked long before.
As for the inside of our house, every room – including bathrooms – has been magically transformed into a winter wonderland. You can’t swing a cat in here without hitting pine needles, a string of lights or a Santa. I feel like I’m living in a store. I have never been on the Milton Christmas Walk – it’s always a tough choice between that and NFL football – but I have been assured that we are not going over the top.
I did take umbrage with the placement of the four-foot wooden Santa carved by my father-in-law. He is patterned after the old European Father Christmas, with a much longer white beard and a pointy red hood. No offense to my father-in-law, whose carving skill was award-winning, but when this thing stares at you as you’re sitting in your living room, it starts to look less like Father Christmas and more like a leering, deranged gnome. Its eyes follow you; it’s Santa as creepy stalker. Fortunately, it has been moved to another part of the living room so I can relax again.
I am getting used to the look of my house, as well as the unusually early sweeping up of pine needles. But I have to admit that my wife did a pretty phenomenal job of decorating. She also did some very clever things with old childhood memorabilia that I’m sure will delight those who participate in the walk.
Americans like Christmas. Christmas is family, and presents, and stockings hung by the fireplace, and good food and everything else that we like. We like it so much we want to celebrate it year-round. So every year, it seems, we push the official start of Christmas further and further up.
Remember when the official start of the Christmas season was the appearance of Santa at the very end of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade on TV? No more. I saw retail Christmas displays by summer this year. Santa arrives at stores and radio stations switch to all-Christmas music long before Thanksgiving. Some folks had their outdoor Christmas lights up – and lit – before Halloween this year. It’s a weird juxtaposition, ghosts and goblins and gravestones in yards alongside icicle lights. We should just call the season Hallowistmas. Several years ago, when Hollywood came out with “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” a film about Halloween spirits taking over Christmas from Santa Claus, they didn’t realize how clairvoyant they were regarding the entangling of the holidays.
In the meantime, Thanksgiving has almost become a forgotten holiday. You don’t see many decorations with turkeys and Pilgrims anymore. It’s a shame, because its purpose and meaning shouldn’t be forgotten.
I have always personally put my foot down about not decorating our home before Thanksgiving. This year, however, we had little choice due to a commitment we made to MACCIT, Milton’s chamber of commerce.
Each year, the chamber does a “Christmas house walk” fundraiser featuring historic homes with their Christmas decorations. For several years, we have been asked to be one of the featured homes. After finishing several remodeling projects, we decided the time was finally right to say yes. My wife loves to have our home decorated for Christmas anyway, so giving her carte blanche for this event is like giving liquor store keys to an alcoholic.
The event takes place on the issue date of this publication, Sunday, December 2. Normally, that’s about the time we’re getting our tree and starting the decorating. This year, it was the end date for completion, so our preparation began very early.
I stuck to my guns and refused to put the icicle lights on the front of the house until after Thanksgiving. But that made little difference when the front lamppost and railings were decked long before.
As for the inside of our house, every room – including bathrooms – has been magically transformed into a winter wonderland. You can’t swing a cat in here without hitting pine needles, a string of lights or a Santa. I feel like I’m living in a store. I have never been on the Milton Christmas Walk – it’s always a tough choice between that and NFL football – but I have been assured that we are not going over the top.
I did take umbrage with the placement of the four-foot wooden Santa carved by my father-in-law. He is patterned after the old European Father Christmas, with a much longer white beard and a pointy red hood. No offense to my father-in-law, whose carving skill was award-winning, but when this thing stares at you as you’re sitting in your living room, it starts to look less like Father Christmas and more like a leering, deranged gnome. Its eyes follow you; it’s Santa as creepy stalker. Fortunately, it has been moved to another part of the living room so I can relax again.
I am getting used to the look of my house, as well as the unusually early sweeping up of pine needles. But I have to admit that my wife did a pretty phenomenal job of decorating. She also did some very clever things with old childhood memorabilia that I’m sure will delight those who participate in the walk.
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