Gifts, Gratitude, The Empty Manger, And A Broken ATM

The kids just got back from their dad’s house on Sunday night, where they’d done an early Christmas gift exchange with their grandparents. As soon as they walked in the door, I asked them what they’d gotten from Santa (early Santa, he’s circling back around on Monday) and they couldn’t remember. Moreover, they weren’t particularly interested in trying to recall.

“Candy!” William said, definitively.

“I think William got a fish,” Beatrice added.

“A fish? Like a toy fish, or a real fish in a bowl?” but neither of them bothered to answer me because they were very excited to hear we had ordered pizza

The kids are not particularly interested in gifts. Beatrice, in particular, lives so lightly in this world that you can rarely get her to name a single item she wants (this year, after much prodding, she told me she wanted Santa to bring her a pair of white canvas tennis shoes and a set of Magic Markers so she could write on her shoes). Every October the kids fill their trick-or-treating buckets with candy, eat three pieces the night of Halloween, and then never think or ask about the candy again.

In theory, this non-attachment to material things is admirable. In practice, it’s annoying, especially when I’ve spent hundreds of dollars and many hours finding the perfect gifts for each of them, in full knowledge they’d be just as happy with a handful of candy, or a twig, or a fish that may or may not be a real fish, or nothing at…