Wrapping Up Guilt for Gifts

He thought the last presents had arrived on New Year’s Eve, but they are still coming.

“These are guilt presents,” he said on the phone. “Somebody gets a Christmas present from you for their kid and they didn’t send your kid one and so they rush out after Christmas and buy one.”

“What’s that?” I asked. Something in the background was going clank-clank. “Did someone get Jonathan tire chains?”

Jonathan is 4.

“It’s the greatest thing,” he said. “It’s a He-Man Laser Sword and it makes sounds when you swing it.” I heard the clank-clank again. “That’s the sounds of two swords hitting each other. And it also makes the sounds of cannonballs.” I heard a whump-whump. “And a laser sound with thunder. And it has lights that go off.”

I asked if Jonathan liked it.

“Hates it,” his father said. “But Rebecca likes it. Why didn’t we have stuff like this when we were kids?”

“Curmudgeon alert!” I yelled into the phone.

My friend laughed. When we were young writers entering our 20s, we swore that we would never become curmudgeons. We swore we would never become like the columnists we sometimes read who grumped about what life was like when they were kids.

And now that we are young writers with our 20s well behind us, we guard against becoming curmudgeons even more carefully.

Unless, of course, we can become like Andy Rooney and make a few million bucks a year off it.

“So what did Jonathan like most?” I asked.

Jonathan’s parents are still at the stage where they insist that their children be called by their full names. Jonathan must be Jonathan and Rebecca must be Rebecca. In about six more months I’m going to start calling them Jonny and Becky and let their parents sue me.

There was a sigh. “Jonathan likes the giant dominoes,” his father said. “They are just big blocks of wood. They just sit there. And he loves them.”

Go figure. The giant dominoes probably cost about $6. The other presents Jonathan got cost many times that and he ignores them. Kids just don’t appreciate life.

“So how was Christmas at Paul’s?” my friend asked. Paul is a mutual friend.

“I spent the holiday at Paul’s,” I corrected him. “Not Christmas.” There were three families at Paul’s house. Each had one kid and it was a typical mix: one kid was Catholic on both sides, one was Jewish on both sides, and one was half-Catholic and half-Jewish.

Not that any of it mattered. The only things being worshiped that day was Toys R Us.

The opening of the presents took about four hours, until the kids became so exhausted ripping off the paper and opening the boxes that they had to stop for a break.

The biggest present was a car for Paul’s kid, Tommy, that he could ride in. Or he could some day. Right now, he was much too small to reach the pedals. “It will take him about two years,” his mother estimated.

I made the mistake of asking why she didn’t get him a car with pedals he could reach now.

“Because there are three of those on the block already,” she said. “This one was different.”

Tommy didn’t care. He spent the day sitting in his car, protecting it from the other kids. Every now and then, he would make a raid on the gift pile, snatching one and dragging it back to the safety of his car.

“The day was . . . it was . . . “ I was trying to search for the right word, the fairest word to describe it.

“Obscene,” my friend on the phone said cheerfully. My friend comes from a big Irish family and his wife comes from a big Irish family and so the presents their kids get at Christmas are measured in tonnage.

“Obscene,” my friend repeated. “You watch the kids open presents until they become glassy-eyed. They can’t even handle all that stuff. It is sensory overload. It burns them out. And you sit there and after about three hours, you want to gather up all the toys they have opened and forgotten about and just take them down to some homeless shelter.”

“Ever try it?” I asked.

“Yeah, right,” he said. “I’d come home and be cut in half by a laser sword.”

“Or have a giant domino fall on you,” I said.

“Besides,” he said, “we are preparing them for adulthood. We are teaching them to be good consumers.”

“Good point,” I said. “But how much of a religious holiday is it for your kids.”

“Curmudgeon alert!” my friend shouted. “How much of a religious holiday is it for you?”

I thought about that. “It’s not,” I said. “Not anymore.”

“So why do you expect children to be different?” he said.

I paused. “Because there’s hope for children?” I said.

In the background, I heard a laser sword go clank-clank and whump-whump.

“If you say so,” he said.