[xmas] The Wrap Trap — Mil Millington on Christmas Presents …‘Presents are what Christmas is made of. The joy (or disappointment, or horror) of receiving them, the joy (or misery, or trauma) of finding them for others; the paraphernalia of present use; the shocking void created by the present that never came; and the Christmas remembered by the present that did. It is a rite with precise rules; “a shopping trip to buy Christmas presents for one’s extended family” is what it says in the OED under the entry for “dispiriting”; looking down at a freshly opened present and realising with sudden, suffocating dismay that this item is how the giver – and possibly the world – sees you; the special laugh you use to indicate how very funny the comedy socks you’ve just been given are: all these things and more are intertwined.’
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