Christmas gifts always mean more than the actual material value of an item. They often represent how people see you and whether or not they value you or not. I was proud to see that so many different people went well out of their way to give me gifts that held tremendous symbolic meaning. The effort placed into each of them goes recognized by me—unfortunately it would be nearly impossible to include them all here one by one in a way that would not bore everyone reading. However, two gifts jumped out at me as being exceptionally good and deserve some recognition.
The first gift was not given by any particular person, but was just a gift of life itself. My wife and I were in our outside hot tub on Christmas Eve, the temperature was right around 15 degrees Fahrenheit with a bit of a chill to the air. The clouds were moving quickly in the noon day sky and the sun was brilliantly bright. We had a particularly quiet morning, which was a gift in itself and had no place particularly special to go that entire day—so I was very relaxed. The mist was coming up off the water with an intense fog because the water inside the hot tub was 102 degrees Fahrenheit. The zone of air about two feet from the surface of the water was well below freezing while a small bubble of warm air mixed around our heads like a miniature climate indicative of the Earth’s atmosphere. I popped open a Mello Yello for breakfast which had been refrigerated at approximately 32 degrees Fahrenheit and a spew of cloud-like moisture erupted from the can. It was a neat geyser effect that would have only occurred in those specific climatic conditions and was something to marvel at. Watching the mist dance in the air I could only conclude that “life was good.”
The other thing was that my parents gave me an iPad Mini for Christmas. That was a very nice gift but was not the climax of the entire ceremony. My mom wanting to build up the anticipation for the gift had wrapped it with incrementally larger boxes so that the origin box was a rather large thing, kind of a matryoshka doll concept. It was this first box that actually turned out to be the best gift. When I was a kid in the 6th grade that box had a special Star Wars gift in it that was particularly significant. It was just a normal box, but my mom had wrapped it in a special Star Wars wrapping paper that was common in 1979-1980. After I had opened that gift my mom had kept the box. She had wrapped it in a way that the paper was attached to the box. Way back then she made a comment that someday when you’re old I’ll give you another gift in it. When I was at such an age a time like that seemed so remote and beyond thought that I forgot about it. Well, this Christmas my mom had done just that using that old box with the 40-year-old wrapping paper still on it looking like it did when it was new. The paper itself would be the envy of anyone who goes to events like Comic Con, or Gen Con. It was a rare item that was like a piece of archeology from another time and place—and it was. After seeing the box again after so many years I really didn’t want to open all the incrementally smaller presents inside—I was fixated on the box. However, after some time, I did finally unwrap my way to the iPad after about six boxes of barrier
I immediately downloaded Star Wars Pinball onto the iPad with Star Wars Angry Birds and had the time of my life the rest of Christmas playing those games. During the age of the original date of the Star Wars wrapping paper the biggest gifts under a Christmas Tree during those years were small little hand-held football games that were basically little digital sticks that could move across the screen with the rapid push of a button. Now games much more graphically interesting and complicated can be downloaded like nothing for .99 cents onto an iPad and played with almost no moving parts to fail after so many button depressions like those old games were subjected to often. Star Wars Pinball is phenomenally fun, and would be worth $2000 dollars to me just for the sheer delight. It seems unfathomable that such a thing could be downloaded onto an iPad for almost nothing. I knew that in 40 more years some future children would look at my iPad and wonder how on earth I could ever enjoy such a thing—but that box with the Star Wars wrapping paper would still be around to bring a smile to someone’s face—I’d make sure of it. The iPad as cool as it was would have long-lost its value, but the box would be priceless to people who appreciate such things well into the future.
For me it’s those kinds of extra efforts put into gifts that I appreciate. Readers here sent me CDs with special songs on them to remind me that they thought of me during the Christmas Season, and other people went well out of their way to throw me similar curve balls of thought picking out presents for me. And of course my mom fulfilled a promise she made nearly 40 years ago and gave me the box with the Star Wars wrapping paper once again. Getting an iPad is a wonderful gift, and cost a lot of money. But the real value comes when such ceremonies are placed on the ritual to give it the added meaning—and that extra thought is what makes Christmas such a delight.
For those reasons and more I watched another Christmas drift off into the cold January tundra of snow, cold, and gray skies with short days and sidewalks covered in ice with a bit of reminiscent contemplation about a Mello Yello can that spews forth magical mist and a box from my distant past that has brought forth yet again a tool of value for my present age.
Christmas is a wonderful time—and this one of 2013 was one of the best for me.
Rich Hoffman
The Overmanwarrior 