These last couple of years I have completely changed my approach to Christmas-present-buying.
I no longer wreck my mind trying to think of the ultimate wow present for the receiver. Because, invariably, despite the fishing, the dithering and the fretting, I would still get it wrong. So instead, I have a new mantra: I only give things I would want for myself.
My presents have the clear ‘Kristina’ mark on them. Last year for example, family and friends got books: quirky books that I had read and loved and wanted everyone to read so they we could have endless discussions over wine and beer. Selfish trait perhaps?
Quite possibly, but at least gift-giving has become a pleasure, and not a sweat-beads-forming-on-temple major expedition.
The best thing about this themed present-giving is that it saves me from trawling the shops with the thronging crowds. People laden with bags slumbering in a daze irritate me as much as go-getter shoppers who don’t stop to apologise when they jab you in your ribs as they rush along.
You see, Christmas shopping is not for me. I get panic attacks in a shopping complex, even when they’re echoey on a Monday morning on a rainy February day, let alone at the peak of the high season. The smaller the outlet, the more boutique-y the shop is, the more there’s jazz playing in the background, the more the chances that I’ll spend my whole fortune.
But in these straitened times, can we really afford to spend fortunes? We have to keep our feet firmly on the ground to help us get through the Christmas season, which can be quite a strain on our pockets – unless of course we are honourable, honoraria-receivers, MPs.
Perhaps it’s time to go creative with our Christmas gifts? Should we go for the fiddly-diddly mistletoe-festooned decoration gifts? You know which ones – switch on your television this afternoon and you’re bound to see a well-groomed lady glueing and cutting and twirling tinsel with a blank-faced presenter nodding vigorously next to her.
I’m afraid the only sound I utter at the thought of having to sit at a table with scissors and knitting needles is a deep, guttural groan. But let us not despair. There is yet hope for those of us for whom arts and crafts have never exactly been their forte. We have a homemade gift at our fingertips: chapbook writing.
Indeed, before Facebook, there was chapbook. We’re talking of a phenomenon which was popular, give or take, a couple of centuries ago.
In Victorian times, a chapbook was a cheaply produced pamphlet of very short, privately-printed musings circulated among friends and acquaintances.
As you can see that whats-hisname geek, Mark Zuckerberg, did not really invent the wheel with his social network site where we update, erm, our friends and acquaintances with, um, short, private musings.
The chapbook was well-loved because the little poems, essays and original writing were homemade, personal and inexpensive. Take for example, the 1946 film It’s a Wonderful Life. It’s the Christmas one about George Bailey, the desperate man who bitterly wishes he had never been born and is contemplating suicide, but is then saved by his guardian angel, who shows him what his town would have been like if he had never existed.
It’s a classic feel-good film which you’re bound to come across on one of the channels (except Living, I’m afraid) these Christmassy days. Before it became a Frank Capra film, It’s a Wonderful life was actually a Christmas chapbook. The author, Philip van Doren Stern, wrote it down as a short Christmas tale and gave it to his friends as a Christmas gift.
Aha, now you’re thinking Twentieth Century Fox will be phoning you up to buy the rights of that little funny anecdote you wrote on Facebook the other day and which got you 34 comments, half of them lazy LOLs (‘I’m laughing out loud’). Eh, unfortunately in these austere times, we can’t afford to entertain such frivolous dreams.
Instead we ought to take a leaf out of the Victorians’ book: this festive season we ought to present loved ones with printer-printed pamphlets of our literary endeavours.
In our gift chapbooks, we can tell our secrets, our troubles, our joys, our profound thoughts and silliest imaginings. We can write pieces of juicy gossip. Or theories on how to make the world a better place. We can share a new recipe or an old memory, a brilliant idea or a stupid one. What great fun.
Chapbooks are essentially story-telling. And that’s, fundamentally, what Christmas is all about: ensuring that our conversations with the nearest and dearest will continue for the rest of the coming year.