Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure Wii is succesfully joining families together over generations and miles, just not this family! The reasons are many and varied; traditions have become deeply embedded as the years have progressed and the majority of my family have remained firm novices when it comes to correct gift purchasing.
The ‘secret santa’ tradition of placing our names into a ‘hat’ and taking out the name of another family member in order to buy just one present every Christmas, began when my generation became adults and started having children of our own. We decided that £20 was a good sum of money in order to buy a decent present for each other and looked forward to unwrapping the ‘family’ gift every year.
From the outset it became evident that certain members of the family were easier to buy for than others. The ones who didn’t specify a gift choice would inevitably end up with traditional and obvious types of pressies. Socks and aftershave for the men and scarves and perfume for the ladies. The more difficult to please and choosy members of the family became the ones everyone would groan over and the ones you hoped you wouldn’t end up with. The fact this was all kept secret from each other left for much deliberation and leg pulling.
2009 has been one of the most notable of family ‘secret santa’ efforts. A number of things have dawned on us – firstly, £20 is nowhere near enought these days to purchase anything half decent and secondly the family saga that has ensued signifies that it might be time to re think the tradition.
The long suffering relatives who didn’t used to mind what they got have finally bitten back and have become the ones who now specify EXACTLY what they want every year. My husband has become one of these and decided that this year his precious £20 family present should be some water proof covers for his shoes for when he’s cycling. I think they’re called gaiters, (well that’s what I told the person who ‘secretly’ had pulled his name from the hat.)
I had given up being subtle in my efforts to find out what my chosen person wanted for Christmas. Cutting down on time and confusion I came straight out with the question- needless to say my person got EXACTLY what they wanted and was very happy with the resultant gift. My sister and brother in law on the other hand struggled to find ‘gaiters’. The cycling magazine hubby ended up with had the £20 attached with a note admitting defeat – they had tried and tried again only to be confounded by the notion of such things. (Annoyingly my brother in law had actually come across them at £30 a pop in a sports shop only to be told by another member of the family that these were not the sort because they didn’t reach his knees! (HIS KNEES!)?)
The brother in law threw in the towel completely however, when, on opening his family present, he was dismayed to see the title ‘Cricket’ across what looked to be a DVD. To contextualise his disappointment it might be helpful for you to know that on a previous Christmas the ‘family’ had given him a set of video tapes showing the ‘complete cricket test series’ (or something of that sort). Although graciously received at the time, I don’t think he ever got round to watching them! This hstory blinkered him to what might have been a redeeming feature in the fact that this was in fact a Wii cricket game and not the DVD he had initially thought, he went off on one about how he hated cricket and could think of nothing worse than cricket and that he no longer wanted to be part of the family!
So...we are potentially one family member short for next year, which, I’m sure you’ll agree, will mess up numbers. So.... I am going to tentatively suggest that for 2010 we think more creatively about celebrating our saviours birth.
