The Real Gift
Advent Season starts today. O joy! Indeed... With Advent and Christmas livens up the spirit of the gift-giving in people. Most of us anyway. And yet unfortunately, rooted that we are in such this reality of ours and running the race of mice and men, the season of Christmas and of gift-giving is so commercialized and gives the unneeded (extra) tension of just what to give one's beloved and the guy whom you've picked to give an exchange gift for the office's Christmas party.
I just dug up something that years ago, much younger and a bit less sardonic, I wrote this article with the intent of rousing others to give more and help to understand and enjoy the giving of gifts. It just might help us (and myself today ;) figure out Advent more and to be able give more. Not just in the material aspect but in the giving more of the self as well. Magis is one term that comes to mind.
May this Christmas be a more memorable and meaningful one. Merry Christmas, beloved!
It is but a wonderful moment in one’s life to receive gifts from other people.
These gifts are given to us by those who care for us and those whom we care for. Ours without obligation and for the best part of course, they are free.
I hold my fondest memories of these packaged joys when they came my way on gaily held birthday parties complete with balloons and clowns and crisp Christmas morns as a young child. During these times as young, innocent children, we gazed in delight and wonder at their presence under our cheerily lit Christmas trees. The littlest ones then waited in gleeful anticipation and fantasized as to what might those various boxes and packages wrapped in such beckoning and colorful wrappers and attractive ribbons might have contained. Normally too they hoped that the largest and heaviest boxes might have their names on the Christmas gift cards taped on them and they would read them as soon they are able to read them. Turning and looking at each card each time a package was deposited there until reprimanded by our moms to leave the gift goodies alone.
In another instance, as a guest enters the door for a child’s birthday party, a greedy celebrant’s eyes snatches an anxious glance first as to what kind of gift may have been brought for him even before the youthful party guest has greeted him, “Happy birthday, there! Aren’t we eating yet?”
Our gifts of that day and age may have ranged from a toy in need of batteries, a cool, new red shirt, those indefatigable photo albums or a tacky, Simpson’s coffee mug as we got a little bit older. Whatever they may have been, they may have been welcome or not but we welcome and receive them warmly still. Those gifts have been given with the best of intentions and of course, they were free.
Free. We may want to do anything with these gifts as we may deem necessary with them depending on its use and function. Some instantaneously open them in front of the benefactor and check them up for size immediately if it’s a piece of clothing so they could request the suddenly sheepish giver to have it changed to a smaller size and color as well. Others have them stored until next year’s office Christmas bonito-bonita to be ‘recycled’, hoping that the others won’t recognize it from last year’s – or recognize his gift to have been ‘recycled’ as well.
Then there are those who keep and cherish the gifts and tokens of affection given them by their ‘significant others’ and those closest to their hearts for all time and posterity. It is this last group that have relatively, truly received their gifts.
Not everyone are as fortunate as some of us to have experienced as such gifts in their own respect, the raucous of children’s birthday parties, the warmth and joy of Christmas reunion parties with our respective families and loved ones or the intoxications infamous of some office parties. Here mostly in this country are depraved lots in various sectors of our society. Those who have barely enough to fill their own mouths for the day have in no manner have an iota of how it feels to engage in guessing games with one’s cousins of who gets the ‘most-behaved-Christmas-gift’ for the year.
But they do get their gifts inspite of their neediness in life. Gifts do not necessarily have to be material and concrete in nature to be given and such in order to be received in return. Such it is with the subjectivity of this world. A gift by most standards has to be bought or made and has to be wrapped for presentational purposes and to perhaps create an atmosphere of suspense.
In my book a gift may be anything as long as it is freely given and given in such a way that a certain amount of love was included in its ‘wrapping’ or ‘packaging’.
They receive the love of their friends, the smile to a wooing suitor from a beautiful woman or the warm greeting of a kiss by one’s spouse after a long day from work. Not a single monetary currency or even a fraction of one has been spent for it.
Strictly for free.
There are some gifts, which do require some manner of effort to be acquired. These however, needed some form of exchange before one to be ‘gifted’ with. There are ‘gift items’ offered by some commercial establishments to their customers in return for patronizing their products or services.
Gift checks are also redounding in circulation and sold so that their beneficiaries can get for themselves what they personally desire for as a gift. More importantly, these marketing contraptions give us the convenience of avoiding the aggravation of choosing gifts for others. If you are the type who always start late in the year for Christmas shopping and joins in the multitudes of nameless, faceless and heartless hordes in fighting over a triviality of which you suddenly decide looks best on your mother – you know hell what I’m talking of.
They are gifts in themselves. But are they free?
In my years of receiving gifts nothing equals as yet to this singular gift I received. It required no coupons from any supermarket or mall too. It cannot be found there or elsewhere. This is a gift like no other and can never, ever be equaled – for real. It is priceless and yet required not a centavo. My benefactor has given it especially for me long, long ago and in fact, for everyone as well.
Actually, it should be spelled Benefactor – and the ‘gift’ was so heartfully presented and in such a glorious way. The ‘gift’ was personally named for you and me long before we were born and with the ultimate best of intents. And the packaging you see, was a bloodied cross. It was two thousand years ago when the ‘gift’ was wrapped and with it, was the greatest amount of love.
This is the gift. It is truly free. Accept the gift freely and truly be free.
I just dug up something that years ago, much younger and a bit less sardonic, I wrote this article with the intent of rousing others to give more and help to understand and enjoy the giving of gifts. It just might help us (and myself today ;) figure out Advent more and to be able give more. Not just in the material aspect but in the giving more of the self as well. Magis is one term that comes to mind.
May this Christmas be a more memorable and meaningful one. Merry Christmas, beloved!
The Real Gift
It is but a wonderful moment in one’s life to receive gifts from other people.
These gifts are given to us by those who care for us and those whom we care for. Ours without obligation and for the best part of course, they are free.
I hold my fondest memories of these packaged joys when they came my way on gaily held birthday parties complete with balloons and clowns and crisp Christmas morns as a young child. During these times as young, innocent children, we gazed in delight and wonder at their presence under our cheerily lit Christmas trees. The littlest ones then waited in gleeful anticipation and fantasized as to what might those various boxes and packages wrapped in such beckoning and colorful wrappers and attractive ribbons might have contained. Normally too they hoped that the largest and heaviest boxes might have their names on the Christmas gift cards taped on them and they would read them as soon they are able to read them. Turning and looking at each card each time a package was deposited there until reprimanded by our moms to leave the gift goodies alone.
In another instance, as a guest enters the door for a child’s birthday party, a greedy celebrant’s eyes snatches an anxious glance first as to what kind of gift may have been brought for him even before the youthful party guest has greeted him, “Happy birthday, there! Aren’t we eating yet?”
Our gifts of that day and age may have ranged from a toy in need of batteries, a cool, new red shirt, those indefatigable photo albums or a tacky, Simpson’s coffee mug as we got a little bit older. Whatever they may have been, they may have been welcome or not but we welcome and receive them warmly still. Those gifts have been given with the best of intentions and of course, they were free.
Free. We may want to do anything with these gifts as we may deem necessary with them depending on its use and function. Some instantaneously open them in front of the benefactor and check them up for size immediately if it’s a piece of clothing so they could request the suddenly sheepish giver to have it changed to a smaller size and color as well. Others have them stored until next year’s office Christmas bonito-bonita to be ‘recycled’, hoping that the others won’t recognize it from last year’s – or recognize his gift to have been ‘recycled’ as well.
Then there are those who keep and cherish the gifts and tokens of affection given them by their ‘significant others’ and those closest to their hearts for all time and posterity. It is this last group that have relatively, truly received their gifts.
Not everyone are as fortunate as some of us to have experienced as such gifts in their own respect, the raucous of children’s birthday parties, the warmth and joy of Christmas reunion parties with our respective families and loved ones or the intoxications infamous of some office parties. Here mostly in this country are depraved lots in various sectors of our society. Those who have barely enough to fill their own mouths for the day have in no manner have an iota of how it feels to engage in guessing games with one’s cousins of who gets the ‘most-behaved-Christmas-gift’ for the year.
But they do get their gifts inspite of their neediness in life. Gifts do not necessarily have to be material and concrete in nature to be given and such in order to be received in return. Such it is with the subjectivity of this world. A gift by most standards has to be bought or made and has to be wrapped for presentational purposes and to perhaps create an atmosphere of suspense.
In my book a gift may be anything as long as it is freely given and given in such a way that a certain amount of love was included in its ‘wrapping’ or ‘packaging’.
They receive the love of their friends, the smile to a wooing suitor from a beautiful woman or the warm greeting of a kiss by one’s spouse after a long day from work. Not a single monetary currency or even a fraction of one has been spent for it.
Strictly for free.
There are some gifts, which do require some manner of effort to be acquired. These however, needed some form of exchange before one to be ‘gifted’ with. There are ‘gift items’ offered by some commercial establishments to their customers in return for patronizing their products or services.
Gift checks are also redounding in circulation and sold so that their beneficiaries can get for themselves what they personally desire for as a gift. More importantly, these marketing contraptions give us the convenience of avoiding the aggravation of choosing gifts for others. If you are the type who always start late in the year for Christmas shopping and joins in the multitudes of nameless, faceless and heartless hordes in fighting over a triviality of which you suddenly decide looks best on your mother – you know hell what I’m talking of.
They are gifts in themselves. But are they free?
In my years of receiving gifts nothing equals as yet to this singular gift I received. It required no coupons from any supermarket or mall too. It cannot be found there or elsewhere. This is a gift like no other and can never, ever be equaled – for real. It is priceless and yet required not a centavo. My benefactor has given it especially for me long, long ago and in fact, for everyone as well.
Actually, it should be spelled Benefactor – and the ‘gift’ was so heartfully presented and in such a glorious way. The ‘gift’ was personally named for you and me long before we were born and with the ultimate best of intents. And the packaging you see, was a bloodied cross. It was two thousand years ago when the ‘gift’ was wrapped and with it, was the greatest amount of love.
This is the gift. It is truly free. Accept the gift freely and truly be free.
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