The Ghost of Christmas Regifting

That does it! I refuse to celebrate Christmas ever again. Either that or I’m going to become a hermit.

The week after Christmas is the annual neighborhood “Regifting Party”. Basically a White Elephant party. A way to trade in (and up?) that chartreuse sweater from Great Aunt Erma.

Before I put my foot down a few years ago, the Regifting Party was fun because of all the extended-family gifts. Back then, the extended family of siblings-in-law, cousins, nieces, and nephews would exchange presents. The problem is that the exchanging of gifts was done out of obligation rather than desire. When people that you’re not close to give you gifts, they don’t always work out. Because how would our relations, who are scattered all over the country, know enough about us to buy something that really meant something to us? We rarely hear from them.

Now they get Christmas cards only. But the kids’ only surviving grandparent still sends a check in early December for me (usually) to buy something for the girls from her since she doesn’t “know what they need” as she says. I don’t mind doing it. But I imagine when she reads her thank you notes from the girls that she’s as surprised as they are to what she gave them.

This year after all the presents were opened and we sat around the living room amid hills of wrapping paper, one of the girls commented that the gifts this year really came from the heart. My gifts from Santa, Finola, and Deirdre all made me cry. (Which is why I won’t celebrate Christmas again. They’re getting too good at making me cry.)

This year, no one asked for anything. No one wrote out lists of Christmas wishes. Each of us in the family had to think about what made the others what we are. Our likes, our needs, our wants.

And they all hit the bull’s eye.

Which means that we have absolutely nothing to take to the Regifting Party. Anybody got any soap-on-a-rope?