I enjoyed Terry's series of gifts during Hanukah, so I thought I would share something else about holiday gifts. Hope you enjoy….
One year, I was able to take one thing off my To-Do list of holiday preparations. It was the year that necessity put me in the position of making a lot of our gifts. At first I was disappointed that our checkbook couldn't be as generous as our hearts, but as I decided what to make for each person and started working on the projects, I got a new perspective. The time I spent on each gift made me feel closer to the person I was making it for. It was like time spent with them, thinking of all the things that make them special to me, and I realized the extra benefit of a handmade gift. A benefit I didn't always appreciate in quite the same way. After my husband and I moved to Texas, we rarely made it back to Michigan for holidays, and my mother always sent handmade gifts for Christmas. Necessity has ruled her entire life, and we became accustomed to not expecting gifts of any great monetary value. Even so, the arrival of her annual holiday box always sparked an eagerness in me that I never fully understood. The gifts were either hand-made or just a small trinket picked up in a dime store, and sometimes there were even gifts for ‘we-don’t-know-who’.
