Merry Christmas

For the first time, someone has invited me to their house for Christmas. On previous occasions I was either alone in Canada or brooding in the land of Saud.

I got a gift for the friend. It took me ages to wrap it. Mental note: Don't throw away the nice cube-shaped box the item came in!

The last, and the first, time I gave someone a wrapped gift from myself was about 14 years ago! My parents and my extended family doesn't really celebrate birthdays, so I've never received a gift from them nor have I given them any. It's odd looking at the West and noticing the sheer frequency of gift-giving throughout the year. It seems that Arabia is colder than Canada.

Update
The wife of my friend had her mother visiting the family. After lunch the lady was enjoying the tasty dessert when she stopped, looked up at me and asked, "You don't go home?"

Earlier I had talked about coming to Canada in the late 90s. That's why she asked. I just shook my head.

"You don't miss it?"

"Actually I like it here," I replied.

"Oh, that's good. No point being in a place that you don't like, ay?"

I nodded and thought, "So very true."

It was a good day.

Comments

[Cafe Alpha]

A cool thing I found this year was that a local dollar store had the prettiest gift bags I've ever seen, in all sizes, for $1 a bag.

They're that sort of colored, inscribed foil paper that catches the light, and they have pretty matching cords.

So you just drop your gifts in bags and they're instantly wrapped.

Merry Christmas.

[Isaac Schrödinger]

Good idea. I'll try that next year.

[Jim C.]

Of course, at least here in the USA, there's a minority school of thought that thinks Christmas has become too commercial. See Stan Freberg's "Green Chri$tma$" and Tom Lehrer's song, "A Christmas Carol", for example.

[Classical Liberal]

People have been whining about Christmas being "too commercial" for years. Christmas is what you make it. For the last several years my family has had a very low key Christmas, only giving a few gifts to each other and mostly just hanging out with each other and relaxing. If some others want to run up their credit cards in an orgy of gift-giving, so be it, if they enjoy it and it makes them happy, I say.

Off topic a bit, but as I understand it, the Twelve Days of Christmas run from December 25th until Epiphany on January 5th. Now, I'm not religious and Christmas in my family tends to have more Santa Claus than nativity scenes, but this gives me an excuse to continue saying "Merry Christmas" through New Years.

Merry Christmas!