Christmas gifts

What do you want for Christmas?

My family has been asking me this question for the past several months.

At first it was casually worked into conversations, “So, what are our plans for Christmas this year?” my wife asked. She knows from experience that when we “agree” to not get each other presents, I will get her something anyway.

In the past few weeks, my family members have become less subtle about trying to find out what I want for Christmas. Earlier this week my wife and daughter bluntly asked me what I want.

I am rather proud of myself for evading the answer by bringing up a different topic and leading the conversation off on a tangent.

Among my extended family, we have switched in the past few years to holding a secret Santa using the Elfster online application. Each of the participating family members uses the application to list what they want within the dollar parameters set.

Given that the participants are my brothers and sisters, there are a lot of inside jokes with what gets posted by people to their lists. While there is a convenience to simply following the link to the online store where the product is located and having it shipped directly to the recipient with the label of secret Santa on it, that seems a bit impersonal to me. Not to mention, that part of the fun of Christmas shopping is actually going to local stores and craft shows and finding things that you can’t simply order from a catalog or are mass-produced in some factory in China or Vietnam.

I tend to approach the wish list of my secret Santa as being a source of inspiration for thoughtful and unique gifts. Alternatively, there are the occasional elaborate set ups for inside jokes that go back decades.

I am proud to say that I secured all of my secret Santa gifts while shopping at local small businesses. It has allowed me to not so quietly judge the others in my household who are on the verge of sending generic gift cards.

Yes, I realize that doing so will greatly diminish the quantity and quality of any potential Christmas presents I could receive, but I am OK with that.

Often people sink into a transactional approach when it comes to gift giving or worrying about quantity even though, for example, a pair of diamond earrings may be worth significantly more than a pile of other trinkets.

While evading my family’s requests for what I want for Christmas, I have been paying attention to try to determine what it is they want. This is generally easier with my children then it is with my spouse. Over the years she has learned how I work and has become cagey in her responses.

A major downside of modern banking processes is that it makes purchasing a surprise gift a challenge. My wife has the app for our bank on her phone and to protect against fraud, she routinely gets alerts when money is spent and will regularly check over the transactions and will ask me about them. I could avoid this by paying with a credit card, which will simply delay her finding out how much I spent, or by using cash.

In order to effectively go the cash route, I need to develop a pattern of withdrawing cash and stockpiling it over a long period of time to avoid the suspicion aroused when I pull an unusual amount out of the bank. This, however, is likely to draw its own levels of suspicion.

One of my challenges, is that the things I want at this point in life range from higher-ticket items like a golf cart or UTV to less tangible (or at least wrappable) things like a cross-country train trip or traveling to curl someplace cool. These are not things you can simply surprise someone with. You could, I suppose, but it would likely cause some drama which is the last thing you want at a holiday.

With less than two weeks until Christmas, I should probably get a move on in my Christmas shopping.

Brian Wilson is News Editor at The Star News. Contact Brian at BrianWilson@centralwinews.com.