Tess and I finished decorating the Christmas tree early Saturday evening. We turned the lights out and examined our handiwork, with only the colored lights on the tree illuminating the den, and pronounced it a success.
With the extra boughs that had to be trimmed from the bottom so that the tree would stand up straight in the stand, Tess had fashioned a wreath for the front door and she opened the door to hang the wreath.
“Oh, look!” she said. “Somebody left us a Christmas present!”
Indeed, someone had hung a small gift bag on the doorknob. They had chosen not to knock; we had been home all day and would have surely heard a knock. Instead, they quietly slipped the gift bag on the doorknob and left.
A little card attached to the bag identified the giver as a city official.
Interesting, I thought.
Some occupations naturally create friendships. Mine is not always one of them, though; especially where public officials are concerned.
I am often sharply critical of them. Not only do I have occasions where I disagree with these people, I disagree with them in the most public way imaginable.
In other jobs, a person might criticize someone with whom he does business, but he generally doesn’t go to the trouble of recording those complaints and distributing it all over town in the form of a newspaper. In my case, “You’re wrong!” becomes “You’re wrong and I’m gonna tell everybody!”
But that’s the nature of my work and I long ago realized that I’m far more inclined to make foes than friends in this occupation. It’s not personal.
Of course, I can understand if the feeling isn’t mutual; being on the sharp end of the sword is bound to create some lasting resentment.
So the little gift bag represented two surprises — the gift and the giver.
It led to a question that probably everyone encounters this time of year: What do you do about an unexpected gift?
There are two options.
The most obvious response is to add that person to your own Christmas list. I suspect this is the path most of us choose. We’ll find a suitable gift for that person and give it to them, hoping somehow that they will not recognize it for what it is — evening the score. Maybe, we think, the person will assume that he or she was on our list all along; that they had just “beat us to the punch.” Deep down, we know better. We are a minor fraud and they know it, too.
The second option is not to reciprocate and it strains against our very nature to make this choice. When someone gives us something, we are naturally moved to return the favor. That’s fine, but I suspect there is a slightly more sinister motive in play here: We can’t stand the thought of being in debt, even when it’s just a debt of gratitude.
I wonder if it is not sometime far better to simply accept the gift and, in doing so, consent to remain in that person’s debt.
This time of year, we are reminded of O. Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi.” A poor young couple desperately wants to surprise each other with the perfect Christmas gift. The young wife would like to buy her husband a chain for his pocket watch. The young husband wants to buy brushes for his wife’s beautiful long-flowing hair. But there is no money for either gift.
You know the story: The husband sells his watch to purchase the hair brushes. The woman cuts off her hair and fashions a watch chain from it.
This is not a story of reciprocation, of course since each spouse acted independently of the other.
O. Henry intended the story as an example of the self-sacrificing nature of love, yet the cynic would note that both gifts were rendered useless by the sacrifices made to provide them.
Still, it makes for a wonderful story and illustrates the larger point that it is not the gift, but the love behind the gift, that matters most.
But I wonder if a different narrative might have worked equally as well, although I admit it would not have made for much of a story.
I wonder if the husband would not have derived great joy from watching his wife brush her long beautiful hair with the brushes he had pawned his watch to buy. Likewise, I wonder if the wife would have drawn immense pleasure from watching her husband proudly wear the watch-chain she fashioned from her own hair. Would not each have had the joy of either gift?
I think so.
Maybe sometimes it’s better to acknowledge a gift than to try to return the favor. A debt of gratitude is never much of burden, after all.
I wonder if maybe that’s the whole point of Christmas.
So what to do about that gift from the city official?
I intend to shake his hand, thank him and wish him a Merry Christmas, operating on the theory that a sincere expression of gratitude is better than a gift motivated by a sense of obligation.
If I judge correctly, he’ll be satisfied with that.
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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