Simply Jonathan

Christmas presents

Christmas is here. Tomorrow, I will be seated with eight of my nearest family members to celebrate. That same night, lots of presents will be unwrapped by yours truly. (In Denmark, it is custom to open presents on the 24th.)

I don’t hate Christmas. While its relevancy, seeing as my family is mostly made up of atheists, is questionable, I like taking a night off to have a nice time with my family. Enjoying company and extravagant food is certainly something I enjoy.

But something I don’t like about it is the presents. I don’t mind presents when they’re personally picked; only, they rarely are.

Wish lists. Wish lists are what I really don’t. The problem with wish lists is that they’re essentially order forms; and when you get to my age and has a decent income, it becomes a question of whether someone else will buy it for you, or whether you will buy it yourself. And that really takes the fun out of it, at least for me.

Mind you, I don’t hate all presents. Giving children a thing they have wished for is certainly okay, because they have no other way of getting it. (The argument could be made that they don’t need all this stuff, but that’s another matter entirely.)

And then there are personal presents. The ones where the person giving the gift has personally selected it, based on what s/he thinks the receiver really needs. These are obviously okay, because they take out the unwanted, order forms, and put in what’s needed: care.

Merry Christmas, and may you receive more presents that others think you’d like, and less of what you yourself think you’d like.

This is Simply Jonathan, a blog written by Jonathan Holst. It's mostly about technical topics (and mainly the Web at that), but an occasional post on clothing, sports, and general personal life topics can be found.

Jonathan Holst is a programmer, language enthusiast, sports fan, and appreciator of good design, living in Copenhagen, Denmark, Europe. He is also someone pretentious enough to call himself the 'author' of a blog. And talk about himself in the third person.