Don't Get Too Wrapped Up With Gift Giving!

Hi friends of steemit and merry Christmas, happy holidays or just “happy weekend” if you don’t celebrate any particular holiday. I wanted to take a few minutes to sit down and talk about what this holiday season means to me particularly and hopefully others. To be honest, I used to hate this time of year. I really did! It seemed like it was a competition in a way with certain people to see who could give the best gifts. My nephew’s parent’s divorced several years ago and at Christmas time each parent would try to “out do” the other by buying extravagant gifts for the young boy. They both made pretty good money so when I say extravagant gifts, I mean it! So what does that mean when Uncle Bandit comes over with his small rinky dink gift?

You guessed it…Whaaa-Whaaaa! Uncle Bandit was just a civil servant and didn’t make good money and couldn’t afford to splurge on expensive gifts for his nephew. To be completely honest, even if I did have the money, I probably wouldn’t spoil him that way because that’s not how I was brought up. But nevertheless, whenever he would open “normal” gifts from me or from someone else, you could sense his disappoint in him which in turn made the Bandit feel sad. His mother tried to correct him and teach him to be grateful no matter how small the gift was but still he could not hide the true emotions. This, along with similar experiences caused me to distance myself from my family during this time of year. That was the best way for me to cope with avoiding the uncomfortable feeling of someone not liking a gift that I got them….just not be there to experience it. That worked a few times but it caused problems elsewhere as you can imagine. I’m starting to steer off track a little bit and I don’t want to do that really so I will get back to the point.

My whole point of this blog is not to get too wrapped up in gift giving during the holiday season. Please don’t take my words out of context and I’m doing my best to use them carefully. Giving gifts is a wonderful thing and I have been blessed by being given some wonderful gifts by some wonderful people but I have also had my feelings hurt by the act of gift giving. For example: If you invite three of your friends to your house for dinner one night and after dinner, you give two of the friends Christmas gifts but not the third friend. You tell the two friends that received gifts to open them up and when they do they’re really surprised to find an expensive gift of some sort inside. How is this going to make the third friend feel?

I love giving things to people more than anything. I would rather give than to receive. I have a very small YouTube channel where I have given hundreds of dollars of gifts away for no reasons at all. I never ask anyone to subscribe to my channel. I think I held one or two contests, the rest of the things I gave away were “just because gifts”. And the contests I had, all you had to do was leave a comment in the comment section, that was it lol. I didn’t ask you to do anything else. So don’t get me wrong and think I’m being a Grinch at Christmas. I’ve just witnessed some improper gift giving if you will over the years and I think the true meaning of Christmas has diminished somewhat. It’s not about getting presents folks! At least it’s not for me it’s not. Spending quality time with friends and family is more valuable than any gift that you can get…period. Speaking of which… I need to get off of this damn computer and go practice what I preach. I sincerely wish each and every one of you the best of love, life and laughter!

Your Friend, The Bandit