Despair 21
Christmas.
A time of festive cheer...
...or a time of DESPAIR?
With the yuletide season comes the inevitable social minefield of gift-giving! With every good intention, there is an equal and opposite bad outcome!
First of all, there's the question of who to give gifts to! In deciding on the set of people you're getting gifts for, you draw a public and unambiguous line between your "important" friends and your unimportant ones! One can try and smooth the boundary by getting gifts of varying degrees of value, but the fact remains that any gift will be percieved as infinitely more significant than no gift at all!
Then, of course, there is the question of what to get! Even in the rare case that you know what the person might like there is an equally dangerous misstep waiting to happen in the relative values of the gift you give to the gift you recieve in return! If yours is of lesser value, then you've laid bare your contempt for the other person, be it real or not! If it is of greater value, then the social pressure you have put on the receiver is grave!
Even worse than this, however, is the ultimate gift season faux-pas: Receiving a gift and having nothing to give in return! Once this gap in perceptions is revealed, nothing but despair can be the result!
In short:
Have a Despair Christmas, everybody!
A time of festive cheer...
...or a time of DESPAIR?
With the yuletide season comes the inevitable social minefield of gift-giving! With every good intention, there is an equal and opposite bad outcome!
First of all, there's the question of who to give gifts to! In deciding on the set of people you're getting gifts for, you draw a public and unambiguous line between your "important" friends and your unimportant ones! One can try and smooth the boundary by getting gifts of varying degrees of value, but the fact remains that any gift will be percieved as infinitely more significant than no gift at all!
Then, of course, there is the question of what to get! Even in the rare case that you know what the person might like there is an equally dangerous misstep waiting to happen in the relative values of the gift you give to the gift you recieve in return! If yours is of lesser value, then you've laid bare your contempt for the other person, be it real or not! If it is of greater value, then the social pressure you have put on the receiver is grave!
Even worse than this, however, is the ultimate gift season faux-pas: Receiving a gift and having nothing to give in return! Once this gap in perceptions is revealed, nothing but despair can be the result!
In short:
Have a Despair Christmas, everybody!