h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Tis better to give than receive they say.
But is it really?


And with sympathy to those whose birthday falls
on Xmas day or nearby, how do you feel about all
that gold and frankincense and myrrh brought by the
Magi? Do you think they meant them as Christmas
gifts or birthday presents?


~jwf~

Bribes.

PP.

I think the three Magi ran afoul of the sanity clause. They travelled thousands of miles to bring perfume to a baby.

I dunno when you nail "giving", where oyu have found some brilliantly perfect present you know the other party will adore it is amazing.

But when you are just doing the "giving by the numbers" I reckon it isn't particularly fun.

Mostly in clan Ferrett we observe strict non agression pacts. Just getting small sub £20 gifts if we are actually going to see one another in or around Xmas.

FB

I feel like Santa gifted me last night.
One of the more obscure TV channels, way up the dial,
was doing a marathon of a brilliant Australian series
called 'Wilfred' with Elijah Wood as a 'depressed man'
who develops a delusionary relationship with a dog.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1703925/

I watched episode after episode, delighted with this
totally unexpected surprise until I finally went to bed
with a very surreal grin on my muzzle.


~jwf~

>>when you nail "giving", where oyu have found some brilliantly perfect present you know the other party will adore it is amazing.
But when you are just doing the "giving by the numbers" I reckon it isn't particularly fun.

Agreed, and what's more, the "empathetic work-out" of thinking about someone else's needs is surely a hugely beneficial exercise.

I and three of my closest friends don't "do" Christmas, it being an over-commercialised middle-eastern death-cult's hijacking of the solstice celebrations of the pagans. Saturnalia, wasn't it?

What we DO do is, near the beginning of December, hire out an agreeable self-catering cottage somewhere remote but not too remote, and go there to cook and share a really excellent meal, and quite a bit of good alcohol, and sit on our respective arses talking toot. Satonarses, we call it.

And we exchange gifts, with a Ferret-like limit on spending, and a strict rule - each one of receives a book, a DVD, and a t-shirt from the others, and each one of buys one book, one DVD and one t-shirt. This requires some organisation, obviously, but we love all that nonsense. And the pleasure to be had finding just the right book/DVD/t-shirt probably outweighs the pleasure we get from the receiving. I've managed a few corkers recently, but my favourite was managing to find a DVD for the only one of our crew who has a wife he has to go home to, which rejoiced in the title "Big Tits Zombie", and had a bunch of busty Oriental beauties on the cover. No idea what the film was like, I bought it entirely on the title. Score.

Just wanted to give the thread an English title.

I read about Saturnalia festivities in some of Colleen McCullough's books about ancient Rome. Saturnalia was marked by holly and evergreen boughs. The masters and servants exchanged places for that one day.

When I was in high school, there was an annual "Roman Banquet" for the students in the Latin classes. We would come wearing togas.The food was good, but I'm not sure how authentically Roman it was. To the best of my recollection, we could talk in English -- Latin was optional.

I fear that Constantine's decision to make Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire was bad for both Rome and Christianity. Not that that matters any more [it's been about 17 centuries since it happened], but I often get a nagging feeling that most modern strains of Christianity are severely corrupted. I don't belong to any denomination, and I limit my participation to helping a local choir with special musical concerts twice a year. Doctrine matters less and less to me with each passing year. Nowadays, many churches are most famous for soup kitchens and outreach to nursing homes and invalids. If Christianity is deeply corrupted, there are nevertheless some people who manage to rise above it and get some satisfaction from membership.

The flip side is a very dark side in terms of politics and social clout. Massachusetts is a very liberal state with laws allowing gay marriage. Some Southern Methodists and Baptists came to the state to demonstrate against gay marriage a few years ago. They seemed very hateful. If hatred is the face of Christianity, maybe it doesn't deserve to survive.

But I digress.

>>..wanted to give the thread an English title. <<

Thank you Alf!

I have no idea why I chose 'gifting'...
very unlike me...
a vulgar Americanism...
I would never use the word in speech...

It seems the 'participation' aspect of the participle
outweighed the groundless gerund so perhaps it was
a sense of wanting to be very succinct and yet inclusive
while remaining vague enough to allow a broad swath of drift.

All I now clearly recall was wanting to avoid something like
'So what did you get for Xmas' or 'Best/Worst Gifts'.




In addition to discovering and enjoying the 'Wilfred'
series I also indulged in a BBC series called "The
Great British Countryside' which informed and delighted
me on many levels about the topography and topology of
Great Britain.

I never knew for example that Scotland was once part of
North America; the Cape Breton Highlands of my Nova Scotia
now seem older, wiser, more romantic and explains why so
many Scots happily settled there preserving the Gaelic
and the secrets of distillery and wool gathering.


~jwf~

I understand "gifting" to be what people do in their Wills. A legal form of changing owners without money changing hands, or something. At least, my befuddled post-celebration brain interpreted it as that.

In other words, a perfectly valid word, but it doesn't mean "giving presents"

It's widely used in football reporting. If you make a mistake in defence, you 'gift' a goal to the the opposition.

Actually, it does: http://www.onelook.com/?w=+gifting&ls=a

Yes, the word's been used in that sense since the 16th Century.

It seems to grate a bit today when there are better alternatives, but we're happy to use the past tense of the verb "gifted" to describe someone talented.

My brother regularly gets me a box of bath products, unfortunately I don't like the fragrance. I don't even own a bath, so what use is bath oil and bubble bath to me? I normally pass it on to my daughter but this year I rebelled and took it back to the store it was purchased from (although not the same town) and asked if I could have a voucher to spend the value on something I actually liked. As I didn't have a receipt, they gave me a voucher for exactly half the amount. What a waste of money! I wish I had the nerve to tell him not to bother, but I fear appearing ungrateful.

< I normally pass it on to my daughter>

That's called 're-gifting' the act of palming some rubbish off you don't want onto someone else.

SEP Squared: Someone else's present - someone else's problem.

No, I don't do that to my daughter. She happens to like the product, so I *give* it to her as an additional present, not in place of something I would have got for her. She knows from whence it came. And she, at least, owns a bath.

I love giving people presents. I love the feeling that some small thing I've done has made someone else's life happier or better. But I know that when I give people lavish presents, it makes them feel bad because they feel then that they owe me one. So if any of you have ever received a present from me that you felt was too generous, just ignore that feeling and enjoy the present. I don't want anything in return.

Unfortunately, the older I get, the less energy and imagination I have for selecting appropriate gifts for the people in my family. I don't know the nieces and nephews who live 100 miles away very well -- I don't meet them more than five or six times a year. I've mentioned the possibility of drawing names and getting one really nice present for the person whose name is drawn. My brother and sister are open to that, but they don't want to rock the boat with changes until my parents are deceased. Both are still alive. This means that I have sort of a good idea what some relatives would like, and no idea at all what others want. I have a teenaged nephew for whom I used to buy DVDs. I would consult his parents about a month before Christmas, and run a list of possibilities before them. I see about 100 movies a year, and have a good idea what most of the likeliest choices would be. Now that he's 18, though, I figure that every teenager would like cash. He seems to be very happy with it, as it turns out.

The seven-year-old grand niece is a different story. I ask her parents or check the Amazon wish lists that they have set up. Alas, for some other relatives I just go a book store chain and buy gift certificates.