Holiday Gift Guide: Read Before Opening: A Survival Field Guide to the Holidays and Beyond

By Mackenzie E. Rivers

A quirky, wise, and inspiring guide to surviving the holidays, offered up without the predictable cheeseball. Twenty-four short essays journey deep into holiday terrain, shed light on finding life's best gifts in the most unexpected places, and provide a roadmap for the inevitable rough terrain. If ever the holiday hoopla and muck needed a guide to lead the way out, this book is it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Nov 26, 2012
• ISBN: 9781624884917

Book preview

9781624884917

Joy, Regifted

I suppose had I never rowed down a river I would not miss it, and having never done it I would have no inkling of what I'd missed. Maybe I would visit a river and see the boats bobbing by, the oars slicing the water into sleek silver slabs and the rhythm of the swirls glinting behind each oar stroke. I might meet a guide and hear what a jolly life it is on the river, the joy in their voice telling me about doing what they truly love to do; or maybe in the dentist's office waiting room catch a glimpse in a travel magazine of some fabulous glossy whitewater adventure spread of happy faces of a happy family being happily splashed. But I would have no inkling.

When I was growing up Christmas was for me pretty much the euphoria and hope-filled balloon that now belongs to my son. He spends hours drawing elaborate pictures of a Christmas tree and presents bedecking the neath side of it: there is the small red pickup truck ornament, the airplane, and big balls of various colors. And the star we made last year, finally, when he could stand it no longer that our tree was star-less, Christmas trees have stars! And so it does. He believes in Santa, but you saw that coming. Having never not had a Christmas, of course he does, and you see too now where this is going. What I wish, because I still harbor my own Christmas-replete-with-Santa dreams, is that when he was old enough to notice more than his own little beanie toes and became aware of this annual hoopla of gifts and cookies and secrets hidden and suddenly exposed on one particular bright day, was that we had done it differently. Now do not get me wrong: Mr. Claus I certainly do believe in and hanker for, but Ms. Frugal it is also; at one point I was asked by another mom if we were Quakers or for the name at least of whatever deprivation sect, The Cult of Not Too Many Toys, to which we obviously belonged. No, I just thought if we gave him too much we would not be giving him anything. Having once had everything I know a thing or two about having nothing.

And so he is genuinely enthused (okay, gleeful, ecstatic, overcome with joy) because unlike the checkout line where there has never been the unexpected, unplanned something or other wheeling down to the sack, on Christmas day he will and has, found toys. Just for him. Toys, and candy, and small unusual things only this mom would think to wrap and bestow. So of course the child loves Christmas. One year the cross-country skis he asked Santa to bring, this year Dear Santa, I have been pretty good he hopes hopes hopes it will be a real telescope.

And for me? Well, Christmases fell short, far far short in my below middle income growing up home, but not in an awful Paris Hilton give me more! more! more! way. I have only the happiest memories of our tree, even the years it was a faux Scotch pine from Sears. It was looped and entwined and plastered with the strangely fat glittered antique balls someone had given my parents as a wedding gift, the felt and glue Snoopy, the pinecone Santa, and the red plastic boot from my first grade teacher Mrs. Smith, all kept in tissue in a fruit box. I was the family cookie baker and even in high school eschewed dates and parties with friends to plummet my interest into flour and sprinkles. We did not get fabulous gifts. Mom would get some small appliance, which I thought wholly unromantic and I am sure she did too, but she never let on. My grandparents would have wrapped a new flannel nightgown and hankies in white tissue and a ribbon for me and for my sister, who hid hers under her bed later in the day. I had a thing about wanting to read a Christmas story and play carols on the stereo and invite the neighbors for hot cider, despite the fact we lived in Florida. Still, I held onto those notions, probably due to too many readings of Little Women, and even years later on my own I always dreamed of the perfect Christmas.

There would be snow. And skiing, early before breakfast even, and through the trees, gifts of seeds and nuts for the woodland creatures (I'm not kidding here, this is my dream after all), and then a breakfast of stollen and Swedish Christmas bread. And then presents. Thoughtful, meaningful, gifts, not too many, but tasteful. Cashmere, a Filson something-or-other for the menfolk, oh! a Barbour waxed cotton field coat, and that teensy perfect blue Tiffany box. Burberry in the stocking, just because! It's Christmas, darling! Then a lovely day, skiing and lunch at the Cook Shack (my Christmas has now migrated to Vail) and dinner at Silverheels.

And I had that Christmas once. It was not a Tiffany box, but an exquisitely expensive and at that time, remarkably chic and unusual watch. An amazingly soft sweater from an amazingly haute couture ski shop in the Village. A delicate collection of handcrafted birdcalls, and a pair of Leitz 10x20 binoculars. Thoughtful, tasteful, expensive. Christmas Eve we had reservations at Silverheels, with time for ice skating afterwards and a final walk through the snow. All after a lovely day of skiing, shopping, the life we could lead as ex-ski bums-turned trustfunders. It was lovely, genteel, enchanting, privileged, and as all those things usually are, flawed. But you saw that coming, of course. What I did not see coming was the flu, or that my then-husband had reserved as a special treat for you a pair of custom Volkl downhill skis, for our custom