How do we give gifts?

“With us, they are waiting in the wings at a conditional Christmas tree. There is no handing over: we are just looking for each of our gifts together. They always show the names of the recipients, but not the names of the senders. Each of us secretly plays the role of Santa Claus – chooses what and to whom to give, how to arrange, what to wrap. In general, wrapping and decorating bundles is the main process, it always happens secretly. Children join this pleasant ritual with great pleasure and also try to please their loved ones with homemade surprises. By the way, they themselves always receive as a gift what they ask for, so they learn to make a conscious choice. Another important skill is to patiently wait for the fulfillment of your desire before the holiday.”

“I am the son of a military man and until the age of six I received training shells and shells from the training ground from my father for the New Year. Probably, another feeling came from somewhere in the past: the larger and brighter the box, the better. I am seriously preparing for the holiday, in advance. Choosing a gift is a kind of psychotechnics, a way to look into yourself. If you don’t feel like making gifts, this is often a sign that they were given to us formally, without pleasure. And it happens that we have chosen a gift for someone – and we like it so much that it is difficult to part with it. But when we give it away, we get strong feelings in return, seeing the joy of another. A gift is a symbolic point of intersection of two psychic energies: the giver and the recipient. For example, I was pleased to receive a figurine of Death with a scythe, which my daughter felt for me. She knows how I perceive the New Year: as death and birth, the transition from one stage to another. The value of the gift is in such an accurate hit. And I, perhaps, am afraid of too expensive gifts. Because the question of balance arises: how to pay for it?

“Less consumerism and more creativity!”

“Usually it happens to me that I start preparing for the holiday at the very last moment, in the hustle and bustle: first, endless pre-New Year traffic jams, then painful searches for parking, then queues in stores, crowds of people, a lot of things … When choosing gifts, I want to think about each person personally, but when you need to give gifts to about twenty people, and time is running out, it is, of course, difficult to do this – everyone is on the run, everyone is in a hurry! In general, now from this process I get much more stress than pleasure, but I would like it to be the other way around. In addition, a gift is a symbolic thing, and over the many years of kinship and friendship, there have already been so many all sorts of signs … We all already have everything! I thought for a long time how to make the preparation for the New Year more creative and less consumerist. And she came up with the idea: it is necessary to celebrate the New Year not in the city, but on the shore, albeit not very warm, but still the sea. We have already discussed this idea in the family circle, and many people liked it. Let the trip itself, new impressions, experience be our common gift to each other.”

“I can do without the necessary: ​​tighten the belt and walk for a long time in the same coat. But without a holiday I grow dim. Perhaps because for too long any purchases were a big event for me, now I want to endlessly buy something beautiful and bright, no matter to whom and what. It is a great joy for me to collect a “gift fund”, sometimes even forgetting what is already in it, and in December to admire all this and determine the owners. It’s nice to get on sales and feel your involvement with lucky people. Collecting gifts is a kind of game, but if it is not there, all meaning of the holiday is lost. New Year is the time when you want to fall into childhood. It is important that everyone gets my gift and attention. At work, we usually exchange small things, but we attach postcards with couplets (of our own composition) or some kind words to them. And the best gift for me is a book, if it is not accidental. Guessing with a book is like picking the right perfume – aerobatics.

TESTS:

• What holiday are you dreaming about?
• Do you enjoy the New Year?
• Are you good at giving gifts?