LAST BLOG POST ‘TIL THE NEW YEAR?

Let’s make it a good one, then.

Yesterday, I attended a Christmas party for the staff of Addiction Prevention Clinical Partners of Boston. It was sponsored by a drug firm—one of the largest in Japan. Perhaps ironically, most of the stuff they sell us is for treating eating disorders or compulsive shopping.

No, actually we purchase large quantities of a sleep aid. And while a buffet-style lunch probably pales in comparision to our annual contribution to the Gross Domestic Product of Japan, it was still a nice gesture. And say what you will about the Pfizers and Eli Lillies harming cute little animals or overcharging their domestic customers, they know how to put out a good spread. Our rep showed up at noon with boxes full of take-out from a really good Szechuan restaurant; the amount of sweet and sour pork, egg rolls, beef and broccoli, green beans, and potato salad (Beats me) left us all feeling mighty food-drunk afterward. But don’t worry, this was the good kind of intoxication, the type that brings complete strangers together, as opposed to the less glamorous type where we go pick a fight with a meter maid or slap our children.

If there was any downside to yesterday’s festivities, it was the gift raffle-type thing that just about every Christmas party has to have. Not that I am opposed to the giving away of presents in and of itself, especially when the clinic purchases them and I don’t have to bring my own. But this year’s gift exchange sucked because it was a Yankee swap; if the Yankee swap teaches us anything, it’s that Yankee swaps run completely counter to what Christmas is really about.

Let me elaborate: The way a Yankee swap works, all the particpants draw a number out of a hat (or in this case, a wicker basket), then select a gift in the order that they draw in. After one round of draws, there’s a second round, where everyone gets the option of swapping their present with somebody else’s. It’s a good way to make an enemy for life, or to end up with something you really want.

Out of thirteen participants, I drew eleventh. By the time my turn came around, I opted for a plain-looking envelope. Luckily for me, however, it contained a crisp, new ten-dollar bill.

As the second round started, I determined to hold on to my present. Nothing else in the swap appealed to me; not a gift certificate to Dunkin Donuts that the office manager snagged, not the body lotions in the nurse’s possession, not the loofah the secretary coveted. But then I saw one of my co-workers, T., standing in the corner with this really cheap-looking pen set. Out of thirteen players, T. had drawn the last. It was hardly surprising that she ended up with the pen set, since it clearly looked like a pen set (in spite of the gift wrapping), and no one really wants a pen set for Christmas.

I really felt bad for T., who helped make my job tolerable during the past week. But I didn’t sympathize with her because she plucked a pair of pens. No, it’s because, earlier in the day, her car got towed, and combined with several unpaid parking tickets, it cost her hundreds of dollars to buy her car back from the impound lot.

This terrible series of events brought tears to her eyes. I mean it; I saw them. She cried. So here I was with ten dollars that, while I certainly appreciated them, I didn’t feel I needed more than somebody else. I also had a sneaking suspicion that, given everybody’s relatively polite nature, she wouldn’t swap her pen set for my ten dollars in the next round. No, she would play the martyr to its hilt, and learn to love her two cheap-ass looking pens.

I think you all know where this is going. That’s right; during the second round, I decided to swap my ten dollars with T. for that cheap-ass looking pen set. When she found out that she was getting money instead of the pens (Given that the person going twelfth did not seize them. But even then, with the thirteenth turn, T. could have always gotten them back), she nearly broke into tears again. These tears, however, were of the joyful variety. And strangely enough, I felt oddly satisfied. This is what Christmas should be about, I thought to myself. Not temporarily appeasing my own transient wants and desires—for example, I wanted to buy “Infinite Crisis” #3, and ten bucks could have paid for that and more—but doing something nice for somebody less fortunate.

Because in the end, what’s the point of owning material possessions, if the sight of someone in trouble fails to prick us in our souls? The day we cannot rise above our own self-serving impulses is the day those impulses define our lives, and we become no better than Sims (Or that guy on HSN who seems to sincerely believe that I. MUST. HAVE. Whatever he’s shilling).

So I ended up being out ten bucks, but fulfilled in ways that go beyond mere fiscal numbers. At least, I felt that way until T., with the last turn in the entire game, traded the ten dollars I was kind enough to give her for a loofah. A fucking loofah! That was when I realized that Yankee swaps represent everything that Christmas shouldn’t be about. I shouldn’t be forced into situations where I want to perform good deeds, because I will, only to feel like a sucker afterwards. I mean, T. could have traded those pens for the loofah, and I could have kept the ten bucks, and everyone would have been happy. Okay, the person with the pens might not have been happy, but unfortunately, the way things ended up, that person turned out to be me.

Yeah, I know none of that argument makes any sense, but Christmas is about doing something nice for somebody less fortunate. For example, certain family members I’m going to visit tonight. I could have bought them something nice with the ten dollars I originally garnered (Or the five dollars, minus the cost of “Infinite Crisis” #3. All they’ll get now is a couple of cheap-ass looking pens. What a disaster! Bah-hum-bug!