“We’ll just draw names again. Except for the babies.”

 I’ve never really cared about the gift exchange element to Christmas.  Time and time again, as a child, I’d be asked what I wanted and time and time again, I’d say I didn’t care.

I’d be pressed until I crumbled and rattled off some random item. A typewriter (which I ended up loving), board games (which I’ve since donated to high school theatre departments), books (I still have every one of these), a video recorder (I used it once six years ago to document a living will).

I’ve never really put that much focus on material things. Not to say that I don’t like material things. I do. I don’t, however, keep a running tally of what I want.

The one year I wouldn’t tell U.L. what I wanted for Christmas (which was nothing), I ended up with a drum set.

I don’t want that to happen again. Nor does he.

Bless my family, though. They simply cannot stand the thought of a child not getting a little something under the tree. Even when it backfires on them, as the drum set inevitably did, in what I’d argue was record time: just under four days.

The only other gift that came back to haunt U.L. was the BB gun/tree stand combo gift that really, when you think about it, never was a good idea…for me. It was transparent whose advice he’d taken on that gift.

I’ve wasted no time, this year, though. I began asking last Sunday, who wanted what.

And the answer I got was the same I’ve been getting since 2006.

“We’ll just draw names again. Except for the babies.”

Please.

My family has grown considerably in the last few years, and that, coupled with the ongoing recession, has led us to collectively agree that it’s smarter to draw names, for the adults…and let everyone buy gifts for the babies.

This is what we decided a few years ago, when the recession was a Bush-fueled gas hike issue and not yet a full-out, textbook recession. Not that it made much of a difference what it was called.

Just like it doesn’t make any difference when we say, “We’ll just draw names again. Except for the babies.”

Obviously, a baby can’t draw names.

Though a few have turned the corner of five, and, in my opinion, are practically old enough to get a job. I mean, if you’re old enough to sing along with Handy Manny, then you can draw names, and if you draw a name, you better have money to buy a gift. It’s hardly Christmas if there aren’t stuffed stockings on the mantle, a gulf of wrapping paper waiting to be ripped into, and so many presents under the tree, you can’t get to the bathroom and are tempted to do the unthinkable.

Because you can’t spell Christmas without “mas.” And in Spanish, that means “more.”

Even when you really, really mean to do less.

We’re now entering our fourth year with this money-saving Christmas decision of ours.

It has failed miserably, so far.

The first year we made this announcement, it was as if no one was even listening. We all ended up buying presents for everyone, and not just one present a piece. Anything we saw that we thought someone in the family would like, we bought for them. My oldest sister does this routinely, not just at Christmas, which is how I ended up with an antique cheese plate and a flashlight that doesn’t require batteries.

That first year, I walked into Nana’s and there beneath the Tannenbaum were enough boxes to build a room at the inn for Mary. Everyone, it seemed, had gone against the “rule” of We’ll-draw-names-again-except-for-the-babies that we’d settled upon not but a few weeks earlier.

Everyone, that is, except for me.

I was true to my word, I honored the rule like any well-mannered child should have, and I purchased only one gift for the name I drew (it was my middle sister; I bought her a day at the spa, etc. etc.) and I bought the babies two gifts each.

The joke was on me all right, as everyone and their mother had chosen some thoughtful gift for every single member of the family, even Keith, and there I sat with one gift card, only, for my sister.

I was livid except it was Christmas and you’re not supposed to be livid when it’s Christmas so I just stayed in my chair and drank my cider, stirring it with my candy cane, and hummed viciously enough to make my point.

Trust me, you don’t want to question a man who can hum “What Child Is This?” and make it sound like a court-ordered paternity test.

The following year, we did something we’d never done before. We opted not to celebrate Christmas at Nana’s. As a matter of fact, we were going to not draw names; we were going to pool our monies together and go to the mountains for a week of pure, unadulterated nature and morning fog. We were going to buy the babies one really, good gift each so they’d have something to open on Christmas morning, but aside from that: our gift to each other would be family time and memory-making.

I was down for that.

There’s no family on earth more exciting and droll to travel with than mine. I’ll give them that, hands down.

That’s all they got, though, because the trip was a few sandwiches short of a picnic.

By the time it was over and we’d returned home, one of my nieces had threatened to file for divorce, the youngest baby had contracted a virulent strain of the stomach flu, and I had to drive back with the old people all the way home. Who, in pure southern fashion of ignoring the obvious for the sake of convincing themselves that it isn’t true since no one’s said it was true, decided to focus the “car talk” on the only bright spot they could think of: the Dixie Stampede. A few moments recalling that indigenous dining experience was one thing, but after two hours, I was done.

I tried to change the topic, but I obviously miscalculated their ability to stretch the limits of their God-given right to talk about whatever the ________ they want to talk about.

So Dixie Stampede it was. That, and the size of the apple pie slices at Aunt Granny’s restaurant in Dollywood. Did I remember how big those slices were?

Oh, and on Christmas morning, guess what: gifts galore. 

Except for me. Again.  I had bought nothing. I’d given my money to U.L. to go in on the big gifts for the babies.  And that was it.

In lieu of cider, I drank hot chocolate.

A little more than a month away from Christmas, now, I want to say I don’t even care. I didn’t, initially. But, then, I thought, No, Kris, take the high road. Do the right thing.

And so, I’m going to.

I’m determined by sheer force of my own personal example, to show this family that Your Word is a Gift Unto Itself. (If I can just figure out how to wrap that).

But, No, I’m not going to back down.

I’m going to buy my One Gift for the Name I Draw, and that’s it, the end, period.

And I’m going to sit right where I always sit, by the piano, and politely collect the slew of gifts I know I’ll be getting, and I’ll enjoy every minute of it.

And, I think this year I’ll bring egg nog. Yes, I think I’ll drink egg nog, this year.

It’ll help.

Related Posts:

• A drum set, and other gifts not to give to children.
• Five foods that made me who I am.
• Yes, Virginia, I am a vegetarian.
• That one time I rode on Amtrak.
• Suffice it to say, I was spanked, a second time, OR The 100th Blog.

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