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Gift Giving

Gift giving is another one of those human activities that leaves me feeling less than human. I appreciate the thought that goes into most gifts but there's not much that I need and I feel overburdened but my possessions as it is. I put a lot of thought into gifts for others but my experiences are arcane; I tend to think of them first and give books to folk that they probably never read.

Part of it is the expectation of it all. I like doing things for people spontaneously, treating them, picking up the check and I enjoy it when others do the same for me. The idea that because it is a person's birthday that we need to have a gift exchanged feels unnatural to me. Almost all of the cultural trappings of Christmas drive all thoughts of Christ out of my mind (it wasn't Christ as baby that redeemed us, so the fetishization of the Christ child at the expense of the Sermon on the Mount is a pet peeve of mine) and materialistic gifts to celebrate Christ's birth feel perverse. But I give them.

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