Anticipation

The wrapping paper, on gifts, seem to catch light off the Christmas tree better than anything else. In one manner of speaking, they are a direct reflection of the relationship with the person either receiving or giving the present. Not through any sort of monetary scale, not by anything that can be judged by anybody but the person that is receiving the gift but a reflection none the less.

It's what comes to mind during the waiting period. The time spent looking at the packages, wondering what is inside of them. When I was a child I'd insist on the presents being on the mantel a week before Christmas, just so you could eye them up; now that I've grown, some, I don't like them to be up there at all; they are too scarry.

I have a mutual hatred of both giving and receiving gifts. It's bad enough giving something to somebody else, putting the time into it, thinking about them, etcetera, but at least that is doable so long as they don't buy me anything. Not because I feel like I'm better than them, but at least I don't have to deal with the guilt of receiving whatever it is that they're going to give me.

Presents are guilt, plain and simple. They represent so much more when they're in their wrapped package. They could be anything at that time; they could be something like discovering a new color in your backyard, and staring at the new color, trying to comprehend it's newness as it gurgled in front of you.

There are, of course, those cynics out there, the ones that find deep psychological problems in people that don't want to open their presents. They believe that the people that don't want to open their presents don't want to face their problems. But isn't there something more to it than that. Isn't the belief that whatever is in that package could be the greatest gift in the world, that it is something that will complete you all the way, something that will console you.

Then again, isn't that the absolute meaning of Christmas.