If you could only buy one gift for someone, would it be practical or fun? Would it be a work of art or a down payment on a car?
What would you rather receive, a wildly creative sculpture for your living room that elicits appreciative remarks from guests, or a set of power tools for repairing your aging backyard deck?
Do the financial circumstances of the recipient come into play when gift shopping? Do we buy practical gifts for our poor relatives and playful gifts for those with dough? What would be the reasoning behind that? “Bill, you need laundry soap and postage stamps. No Amazon Echo for you. Of course, your kids get toys.”
What sort of gifts do we want to tear open? Do we want to strip away the colorful wrapping and be awash in gleeful pragmatism, or have a good laugh? Do we want socks? Sweaters? Or a tribal carving of a mating ritual lost to time immemorial?
This is why I buy two gifts for most of my relatives. I can’t make up my mind.
When I think back to my own childhood Christmases, what gives me the most satisfaction is the memory of actually opening the gifts, tearing at the paper while the prize inside is still a mystery. I love that excitement and suspense.
This is also why, for over 30 years, I have given my children, and now my grandchildren, one gift each that is wrapped a dozen times over, box in a box, layer under layer, using up rolls of wrapping paper. It takes ten minutes to open, providing ten minutes of paper tearing, excitement, suspense and surprise.
Another tradition at our house is that I give each grandchild a boxed gift that is empty, but with a clue inside leading to somewhere else in the house, where a second clue leads to a third clue and so on for a half-dozen clues and finally to the gift, hidden in the closet.
I’ve had some zinger clues over the years. One of my favorite pranks that I could only pull off once per grandchild because they would wise up quick, took place in Tahoe. The clue said to look for a message on a paper plate in the forest behind the cabin.
On Christmas Eve I would trudge out through the snow as far as I could go where the plate could still be seen from the back deck, 50 yards maybe, and staple it to the bark. The clue leading outside would say the next clue is deep in the forest on a paper plate sign on a tree. The hapless chosen grandson would see the distant white speck from the window, put on his snow boots, and clomp deep into the forest to the sign. The sign would say, “Look behind you.”
When they turned around to face the cabin, they would see the second paper-plate sign, stapled to the back of the closest tree to the house. That clue would say to quit running around in the forest and come back inside for the next clue.
I over-spent this year. Got painted into a corner. I bought my first Christmas gift for my grandson Tyler, 14, a budding musician. He has taught himself guitar and piano. He’s in the school band. He loves music and has eclectic tastes. His house is always loud with his music, created or streamed. I knew exactly what he needed – quality headphones.
Beats by Dre are top of the line. I admired them on Amazon for several months, hesitant to press “Buy because” of the high price. They I found them $60 cheaper at Costco, so I bought them. One grandson done.
The next week Susan and I are driving into the hills with our other grandson Jack, the dramatic younger grandson. What to buy him was still a mystery. Then he volunteered from the back seat, “You know what I’d really like for Christmas? A good set of headphones. You don’t have to get me Beats, Papa, because they are really expensive. Just something nice with Bluetooth would be OK.”
So there I was in a quandary. Tyler already had Beats in the bag. Now Jack wanted headphones specifically. Do I buy Jack a cheaper knock-off set of headphones while his brother gets Beats in his box? Couldn’t do it. I bought a second pair of Beats.
Then came time to shop for River, our youngest grandchild. He didn’t want Beats headphones, but we just raised the bar on gift-price averages, so River got himself a nice remote-control Sphero Star Wars robot with a wristband. I’m going to have to be retired for two weeks to pay for it all.
I hope everyone got what they wanted most this Christmas, be it material or immaterial.

Steve Gibbs is a retired Benicia High School teacher who has written a column for The Herald since 1985.

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