Christmas Truce

My wife and I called a Christmas Truce this year.

I’m afraid the many places in the world where an actual Christmas Truce (or a truce of any kind) would be welcome are not going to benefit. Likewise, it’s not as monumental as when two warring armies agreed to stop killing each other for a while so they could get together for a soccer game in No Man’s Land.

No, ours is simply about presents.

This is not an attempt at economizing, it’s to keep our flat from filling up. Every year we buy each other gifts and every year we have to find someplace to put them. Given the laws of physics, this is not sustainable.

And so, a truce: Five gifts each.

This is in addition to our Chocolate Truce, which we called some years ago. Again, not an attempt at economizing, or at giving it up (God forbid!), it’s just that it’s easy to go way overboard with the chocolate at Christmas, and before you know it, Valentine’s Day is here, followed shortly by Easter, and the chocolate keeps piling up. Even though chocolate doesn’t take up much space, I’m not sure we would be happy with the space we, ourselves, would take up after eating it all.

And so, a truce: Chocolate (of course) but a reasonable amount.

Oddly, this works in our favour. By maintaining a low, but steady stream of chocolate, rather than suffocating ourselves under a tsunami of confections at Christmas, we can enjoy it all year round.

We extended this truce (the gift truce, not the chocolate truce) to my US family, as well. Realizing that they probably expend as much angst over what to get the foreigners as we do, I decided to cut my boys a break by informing them they could just send us a card. I also warned them to not expect anything from us.

And this makes sense, because they’d traditionally send us gift vouchers for Barnes & Noble Books (a place we do not need encouragement to go to), and I’d send them the same amount in cash inside a card. We defaulted to this because, really, what do you get an adult for Christmas? Whenever anyone asks what I want for Christmas, I tell them: “I’m an adult and I have a credit card; for me, every day is Christmas.”

I realize this is not for everybody, and to prove it, I just now received a Christmas card from my oldest son, with a gift voucher for Barnes & Noble Books inside. And, as promised, I sent him nothing.

Opps!

I suppose I’ll have to make it up to him after the holidays. But for now, the truce—tenuous as it is—continues to hold.

PS: the G-Kids, of course, are exempt.