Day 14

Day 14

It’s Christmas and I couldn’t be more ambivalent toward the gift giving process. It’s probably because I am still a teenager and I am way too cool for Christmas, or because it’s only a corporate brainwashing scheme or something… dude.

Truthfully it’s because I am a terrible person to buy gifts for and it is nearly impossible to please me. Yes, that means that I am either a spoilt brat with too many privileges or…

Or nothing that’s almost exactly what I am.

I can have almost anything I need and everything to be grateful for, and believe me I am. That’s why no-one likes buying gifts for me. I don’t want them or need them. I have everything and that is an insane blessing.

This blessing, and the resulting lack of interest in this aspect of the holiday has ironically granted me a great gift. The gift of reflection. I am able to fully witness the pandemonium which ensues when people try to gather with less popular family members around a dinner table. I can look around in silent contentment at my brother, while the disappointment of another cheap wallet being received instantly disappears behind an Oscar winning performance of fake smiles and insane gratitude. I can appreciate the meaning of Christmas being so heavily debated that most people start to care less about it than me.

But I’m a bit bored so let’s kick this dead horse in the nuts a few more times and contemplate the meaning of Christmas. To me it’s easy, Jesus was born, and we choose to celebrate His birth on 25 December, many other boring, yet reassuring and happy, contemplations follow this fact. To many other people it is not that simple. To them it means anything from hope, to Santa, to satan, to being able to eat for once.

That is the beauty of Christmas. It means so many things to so many people that it seems stupid to try and debate one true meaning, the choice is yours. So let the debate rest and enjoy the holidays, or Christmas or whatever you like to call it.