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the gift that keeps on giving
"Christmas decorations!" I shriek as we walk past the display window of a shop on St-Denis. "It's the first fucking week of November!"
"I know," S. says. "It's starting."
(It's true. Earlier that day I had noticed that the huge cone of lights is already up in Place Ville-Marie. No lights up on the trees on McGill College yet, but you can bet they are coming. I hope they don't use those weird red lights hanging in bunches off the tree branches again, like they did last year. "It looks like the trees are bleeding," I said to G. "It looks like snot," she said.")
"That's why I like to do all my shopping in the summer," continues S. "They're not so much in your face about it then."
"Oy," I say. "I guess that's something I have to start thinking about now. Christmas presents."
"Do you give a lot of presents?" S. asks.
"Well, Christmas is a big deal because it's the only time everyone in my family gives presents to each other," I tell her. Christmas is really Gift Day at our house. It involves a tree and coloured lights and mailboxes in which Santa leaves us letters, true, but mostly it is about giving and getting. My mother, who is Jewish, is in charge of Christmas at our house. It is a classic case of parents trying to give to their children the thing that they, as children, always wanted but never got.
"But you give good presents, right? Not just crap."
"We try to give good presents," I say. "Sometimes we give crap too, though, I guess." Thinking of the trinkets my evil step-grandmother used to send.
"That's what I hate," she says. "People give each other so much crap."
"Yeah," I agree. "It's pretty out of control."
"It's disgusting! There's no reason for it!" She goes on for a bit. "It's so awful."
"I know," I say. "So you've already figured out what you're giving everybody, then?"
"Well, I'm going to give my mom a vibrator," she announces.
"Really?" I say, impressed. "Awesome."
"Yeah, well it's the gift that keeps on giving, right?"
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"The mind of the thoroughly well informed [person] is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, and everything priced above its proper value."
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