You and I are Too Old to Believe That Gifts Are a Substitute for the Real Magic of the Holidays
Too Old for This Sh*t: How to Take Your Life Back from an Ageist Society
My friend called me a curmudgeon, but with love. That’s why I love him
He was right, and we were right in the middle of the best of all Christmas gifts.
In-person time.
When I was very young, my parents, probably like many, would try to make up for a bum year of not being present by giving presents.
My dad had this terrible idea that he could buy love with money or gifts, so the morning of Christmas, even on our very meager budget, there would be piles of goodies.
Yet nothing ever made up for their emotional absence. If anything, that lesson got ingrained in me, that if I wanted love I had to purchase it in some way, whether by gifting gifts or sex or whatever.
In other words, we were taught that we are not lovable for who we are, which is our birthright by being born, but that we have to buy it.
That’s no kind of gift at all to give a kid: the message that love can be purchased. Like all American/Western messaging, though, it sure serves the economy.
JC and I were eating a hearty, ridiculously gorgeous oatmeal breakfast at Gravy, our fave restaurant on Mississippi in Portland. It’s loaded with fruit, then sprinkled with brown sugar which is then caramelized under heat.
Oh. My. God.
He paid for breakfast, which is usually my treat. JC’s thirty years my junior, one of my closest, deepest friends, and family. Conversations with him are a treat. They feed both of us far better than the oatmeal.
That’s the gift.
I could be sucking on shoe leather and I’d be so delighted with his company that I would feel nourished.
THAT is the gift: TIME.
Quality time.
Before we had a falling out, which is another story, I used to spend Christmases with a friend up in Washington State. One of my gifts to her was to take on as much of the choring around the holidays as I could. That allowed her to have more personal time, grandkid time, horse time, all the kinds of quiet that too many mothers and grandmothers (frankly all of us) don’t have around the holidays.
That allowed us long talks, long walks, and the kind of personal time that I really appreciated.
Everyone looks forward to different parts of the season, but we get so caught up in the machine to get the PERFECT GIFT that the most important one gets forgotten.
Look.
If you and I would spent more of the time we invest in searching online for gifts by spending true quality time with those we say we love, boy would our worlds be different.
Transformational, in fact. It isn’t just the holidays.
My family made the brief time around the holidays one big fat apology for being absent the rest of the year.
I finally shitcanned one romantic - I use the word sarcastically- relationship which I had allowed to drag on for fifteen years (no, please, don’t get me started). The man involved never ever ever EVER had time for me. Time for quick screw, then a mad bolt for the door.
He would have given Usain Bolt a run for his money. Always time to take, no time to give.
Each time I asked if we could please just have time to talk. His response:
I ended a lifelong relationship- a best friendship- with a woman I admired greatly. We were besties for forty-plus years. The last three years of our connection, the first thing she said to me when I called was:
“Honey I don’t have time to talk right now. (mumble excuse)”
It was so predictable I swear she had it on voicemail, just to respond to my number.
I walked out of that relationship. Nine months later she noticed. No, really. Then she was pissed that I had disappeared. What on earth annoyed her? That I wasn’t around for her to practice saying “I don’t have time"?”
Thanks for taking nine months to notice that your erstwhile “best friend” was AWOL.
Do you “too busy” yourself right out of your love affairs, your kids’ lives, your friends’ lives?
Do you- and I’ve done it plenty myself-somehow believe that the BIG GIFT will make up for the fundamental lack of deep investment in those people we claim to love?
The Christmas friend in Washington State used to tell me, year after year, that THIS year she’d visit me in Denver, where I lived for decades. I put it on the calendar. Then this excuse, that excuse. Not this year, next year. Not this year, NEXT year. For sure.
Then at Christmas- and both she and my erstwhile best friend did this- would regale me with stories about the friends that they had indeed found time to be with.
Yeah, well, OUCH.
For people with concrete for brains like me, I showered these women with expensive presents, hoping that would buy me time. Love, actually.
I did it with the man, too.
The man, BTW, famously gave one of my gifts, a $400 custom leather briefcase, to his brother. Then he left behind a $600 leather aviator jacket- that took me AGES to track down- behind at my house when he left.
One year I gave that man a Christmas card, hand-made (I’m an artist) which promised him unlimited blow jobs if he would just spend a little time with me.
Any self-respecting red-blooded hetero man on this planet might have been pretty happy with that offer. Hey, I’d have invested in a knee cushion.
He didn’t have time.
All my male readers are experiencing heart palpitations. I feel ya, guys. WTF, right?
Money can’t buy you love.
But America would have us believe it.
We all may mouth this meme. Yet at time when we allow our phones and screens and devices devour our hours, the only real gift we have of value to offer gets given to the app designers, influencers et.al. who don’t give a crap about you.
You’re there to buy the crap that the advertisers are shouting will make people love you.
No.
They won’t.
Time, that terribly limited and irretrievable treasure, is our greatest gift.
This holiday season, Substack writer extraordinaire
is spending extra time at her 76-yo mother’s, after her mom broke an ankle. While that can be annoying in some regards, and there are other priorities, at some point, that time will likely be recalled as enormously precious because Mom won’t be around any more.A while back Kristi lost her son. If any of us has ever lost someone we love, and I most assuredly have, including the love of my life when I was 21, the one thing we all mourn the most is lost time.
The lives we didn’t get to see blossom, grow, give more life.
The gift of sharing more life with folks as they aged.
Screens can give us time with people we love, but they can assiduously rob us of that opportunity to invest and be invested in those we love.
Every single day I start my morning with a call from my real friend in Denver. Real friend because we invest time every single day, time working through life’s shit sandwiches, celebrating the wins and mourning the losses, challenging each other to be brave and be better. (I will refrain from “be best” for all the obvious reasons)
Time with my true friends invites me to grow. Screen time all too often just eats up what limited time I have left to me at this age. At any age for that matter.
While gifts are one of my love languages, the one thing I understand that is a statement of my relative value to anyone is their time. JC’s time, for example, which is full of challenge and laughter and learning and boundary-pushing.
Time is the one true universal love language.
I can die with a lot of friends or I can die having had a hell of a lot of screen time. Friends take work, commitment, patience, self-reflection, full engagement.
Family, kids, the whole lot of us messy, demanding, irritating, and ultimately gorgeous human beings, life is made worthwhile through loving and being loved.
This holiday season, I sincerely hope that you will consider what you’re giving. The impact of the dollars spent vs. what would happen if instead you committed to time with those same people.
Just asking you to consider.
We give our time to what we care about. The people I have invited out of my life made it very clear that I wasn’t worth their time.
Where we spend our precious time is our truth. We all have time for what we really care about.
Watch where you spend your time, that is what you worship. If you’re worshiping at the altar of your screens, no wonder we have a loneliness epidemic.
I’ve spent a great deal of time all over the world, and in some of the world’s poorest places. The amount of simple joy I see there, which I do not often witness in the West, is likely because people invest in each other, rather than the constant search for The Next Big Thing.
Like rushing to buy a sex toy that shouts Oh Come All Ye Faithful just because the neighbors have one.*
Aren’t we worth joy? People, animals, nature, we are surrounded by love and we aren’t seeing it. Are not all these people and things worth your time?
“Days pass. Years vanish. We walk sightless among miracles.”
-Jewish Reform rabbi Chaim Stern
Make yours count this year, at the most emotional time for so many.
Make it count for you.
Those you love are worth the time.
You are worth the time.
Dear Reader is worth my time, and writing is indeed an act of love. Happy holidays.
I hope in every way your holiday season, whatever you celebrate, is full of people willing to give you their preciouse time. If this article was valuable to you, please consider
If someone in your life might need a reminder about what really matters, please also consider
Either way, please also give yourself essential me time. You are most assuredly worth it.
*George Carlin devotees will recognize this line from Carlin’s riff on the Ten Commandments. ALWAYS attribute.
Yes, indeed, time is the most precious thing we have and that we can give — along with our attention. It's no accident that in our newish "attention economy" we're encouraged to maximize our productivity by all means possible, which never ever involves just hanging out with people who are important to you or who might just need you. Cheers to this post. But -- um, IS there a sex toy that plays O Come All Ye Faithful??
Thank you for this reminder, especially around the holidays. When you think of the people you have lost, it makes you appreciate how swiftly time passes. Time with loved ones - who love you and yes, spend time with you, is so valuable.