We’re trying Christmas without presents. Blame my late Aunty Elspeth

The base of the Christmas tree looks a bit depleted in an empty nest. A white envelope. A couple of token efforts. Something from someone, but not for us. There’s a temptation to wrap up some empty boxes, like a shop window, for appearances’ sake.

When do you outgrow Christmas presents? We decided that this year it’s us. There’s no lack of love, and there will be parties and lunches. There’s just a recognition that you don’t have to obey social conditioning, especially when you’ve reached an age when Christmas seems to come around every six months. And in December, when you’re exhausted by everything, you can go easy and not load each other up with some week-long search-and-buy mission.

Illustration: Dionne Gain Credit:

But it’s the thought that counts! I remember my grandmother replying, “Well, here’s a nice thought for you.” (She was tricking; she then gave us a present.)

Thing is, the thought that counts can hit you at any time of year. In October, I thought of something my brother would like, and got it for him. Only, I had to wait until Christmas to give it to him because then it would save me from trying to have another thought and possibly drawing a blank, leading to stress, anxiety, a panic purchase and an apology: “But remember what I got you in October?”

Australians will spend $425 per person on Christmas presents, according to the Australian Retailers’ Association. That’s $11.8 billion, in increase of $1.6 billion on last year. We have a strange way of expressing our cost-of-living crisis. Spend our way out of it? A treat to make up for a year of scrimping?

If we put it aside, that $11.8 billion could buy us one-third of a nuclear submarine, or perhaps one-13th by the time they’re done. Or pay every Australian household’s electricity bill, or every nurse or teacher, for a quarter. It could run the Medical Research Future Fund and every MRI and nuclear medicine imaging machine in the country for a year, the entirety of the federal environment, energy, water and climate change departments, with more than enough left over to run the ABC and SBS. Or, if you’re that way inclined, it would buy one-32nd of a nuclear energy plan (best-case scenario), delivered when the planet has already cooked. Maybe keep it and spend it on Christmas.

It was floated, a couple of years ago, that our family donate our Christmas gift spending to charity. This idea was vetoed by one family member, who, without giving too much away, was my mum. Mum also opposed a Kris Kringle arrangement, which the in-laws do. Mum is still wedded to the joy of gift-giving, and I get that. Christmas would not be the same without everyone carefully peeling stickytape from expensive paper so that it can be re-used, and it is important to maintain the custom of children opening their presents on December 25, even if the children now qualify for a seniors card. There’s a lot to be said for tradition.

Except that for Mum, the sound of December is now cicadas and the pained groan of “What am I going to get you?” And then, because it’s so much inconvenience for her, it’s your job to find it, get it, wrap it, and negotiate an online bank transfer. You might as well also sign a card to yourself, with lots of love.

As for the receiving side, Mum’s reply is an equally pained: “Oh, I don’t want anything.” And I know for a fact that she doesn’t want anything, because the minute Mum wants something – gift-sized, price-appropriate – she goes out and jolly well buys it. Right up to December 24.

So Christmas is crying out for a rethink.

In case this sounds like peak Grinchdom, kids are the exception. A good reason for indulging in this rebarbative, robotic, herd-like, self-immolating consumerist rampage that we call Christmas is the joy of seeing kids open something they’ve always wanted (or, in the case of under-twos, something they’ve never wanted, but they do get a day of massive fun playing with paper). Yes, watching kids open their pressies is the meaning of Christmas.

The question is, how old is too old? Our 22-year-old, living overseas, will get a genuine throb of yearning when he receives the love and thoughtfulness represented in his gift, even if the postage alone could have been cashed in for a good night out or three. Our 21-year-old will love her gifts because she’s a sentimentalist who loves giving and receiving. My inner (that is, outer) Grinch can’t stop this happening and nor do I want him to.

But there comes a point. For the first time, this year my brother and I have made a pact against buying gifts for nieces and nephews. I hope he sticks to it, because if he doesn’t he’s going to make me look like a real lowlife, which he’d enjoy doing, so maybe I should have something in reserve.

At this time of year, we like to remember our late Aunty Elspeth and her Christmas “gifts”. When we were 15, she gave my brother and me a rubber bouncy ball each. Not a soccer, volley or even a tennis ball. Just a grapefruit-sized rubber ball with stripes. The next year, she gave me a fridge magnet in the shape of a frog.

The running joke was that she clearly hadn’t paid for these things, and if she had … no, she hadn’t. She was going through the motions, but in such a way that she wasn’t even going through those motions. It was an up-yours to materialism, nothing personal. And yet when the Christmas party came around, we’d love spending time with Aunty Elspeth because she was interesting, curious, super-intelligent, irreverent, and she spoke to us as equals. We miss her dearly, and long after every other Christmas present faded from memory and she had passed away, the frog continued clinging to the fridge.

The base of our Christmas tree is bare, but it’s a nice tree and a charity got paid for it. It’s the thought that counts, even if my first thought is how I buggered my shoulder carrying it. And if that wrapped thing sitting at the bottom is a fridge magnet or a rubber ball, it’s not a sad little nothing, it’s the beautiful sadness of remembering all those family members who were once with us and who we’d give everything we have – and every nuclear sub we might one day have – to see again.

Malcolm Knox is a journalist, author and Herald columnist.