What madness is this?

Towards the top of today's Bleat, James Lileks writes:

I had my coat and sunglasses and car keys and was all set to head off to the Mall to return things, until I realized: okay, I’m not sane anymore. Why would I want to stand in a long line today when I could stand in a short line tomorrow? What madness is this?

Good question. But there is more that is crazy here than willingly standing in long lines. Put it this way, two days ago, on Christmas, we celebrated the coming of our saviour with gifts and fellowship and today we are talking about returning those gifts so we can spend the money on what we really want!

I don't mean to pick on Lileks in particular, he writes this about this stuff in a public forum but lots of people do this. An ex-girlfriend of mine once told me that she usually returns most of the the things she is given.

Think about that for a while. These are gifts. This is stuff we didn't have up until two days ago, stuff that other people put money and effort and, perhaps, even a great deal of thought into and now I'm rushing off to exchange them for something else.

I mean, we could all just keep our money and buy ourselves presents that way. We could sit around the tree and show off what we'd bought ourselves and everyone could congratulate me on my good taste in picking such a darling sweater for myself. That would be meaningful.

Yes, lots of gifts are badly chosen. Many gifts even come with an agenda,

• when we think someone should be dressing better we give them the sort of clothes we think they should be wearing;
• when we think someone should be losing weight, we give them athletic gear;
• when we think someone should be reading more and playing video games less, we give them a book;
• when we think someone reads trashy books, we give them the kind of book we think they should be reading;
• when our brothers and sisters grow up and change, we give them gifts that remind them of the person they used to be and that we wish they would return to being;

and there are countless other examples. Much of what is wrong with Christmas begins with the way we give gifts; we spend far too much money and think far too little about this and we give too often out of a sense of obligation rather than any real love and devotion. But, for all that, this remains a gift from another human being and it comes from them with all their faults and failings. To refuse the gift is to refuse them and it being a bad gift poorly chosen does not change that.

Above and beyond that there is what I call the virtue lesson. These gifts, perhaps even especially the badly chosen ones, can tell us a lot about what other people see in us. They tell us what other people think we are good at and what other people think we are better at. This really is the way others see us! We don't have accept that judgment as final, but we should be thankful for this opportunity to consider it awhile.