Christmas is just around the corner and for most folks the holiday can bring about unique expectations. As a usual custom, I spend time with family and friends and/or exchange gifts with my boyfriend if I’m in a relationship at the time.
Two things come to mind for me in particular during this time of the year with my beau. First, are we going to spend Christmas together? The other thing for me to think about is gift giving. For newer relationships, Christmas can be ‘dislocated’ at times if you’re holding it on a pedestal or expect it to be a brown paper package tied up with string , left on your doorstep Christmas morning, smelling of sweet orange and cedar.
Below, I’ll attempt to explore some attitudes in how QUALITY TIME and GIVING/RECEIVING GIFTS influence our thoughts on love and communication when it comes to relationships.
For me, I’ve been fortunate to have great relationships with guys in the past who’ve not only surprised me to be thoughtful, but also uber awesome gift givers.
From my perspective, gifting (Giving/Receiving Gifts) is really one of those ways to communicate to someone either consciously or unconsciously what we think about them and how we hold them in our hearts. There is this ever-growing state of truth to me where the story about a gift and it’s purpose along with the intention it’s given is more important than the gift itself.
Being a naturally inclined giver, I really have the opportunity to shine and gain satisfaction when choosing to give a gift to a partner. The act of giving actually energizes me, so my tendency is to look for ways to do that:
I like to give appropriate, thoughtful and sentimental gifts.
I like giving gifts that make people feel EXPENSIVE and VALUED.
I like to give that which uniquely can come from me and no one else.
As for actual plans on the day of Christmas (Quality Time), your current love interest may have existing family commitments or traditions such as an annual trip they all take to a cabin in the woods during the end of the year. Or better yet for you – someplace warm and relaxing where the sun can beat on your back and the likelihood of a male Hawaiian tropic model delivering a combo plate lunch to your hotel room has a much higher probability than the likelihood of being able to leave your jacket and umbrella at home because of a clear Seattle forecast (yes, we get them sometimes). Maybe perhaps, he returns home annually to whatever small town he’s from to see his entire family and old high school friends. Whatever the reason for you two being apart, that first year of a Christmas experience together can leave a sense of “incompleteness”. To clarify, this is vastly far and away from the concept of being a content single gay man on Christmas. Who wants to snuggle anyway? [I do.]
I’m more focused on the idea sold to us of this picture perfect Hallmark Greeting Card where the kids wake up excited in the morning – running downstairs to open their gifts with the dog barking next to the fireplace where the parents (in my world, Two Dads) stand along the entryway smiling about having left gifts from ‘Santa’ for their children.
Who sold this idea to us and when did we buy into it? I rhetorically ask as I just got a TV and started watching these commercials on how to make the season brighter with a “new iPad for Dad” or baking Pillsbury cookies at home with Mom.
Where Are You Spending Christmas?
In reality, Christmas is what we make it. My rather large family celebrates by having all the relatives come out for the fiesta-style event at my grandmother’s home filled with stick-to-your-gut Filipino food, karaoke and pinoy laughter and storytelling. I’ll get the usual ‘Where’s Your Friend?’ questions from my cautious, Filipino aunts who will holdback using the word ‘boyfriend’ or in Tagalog ‘boyprend’, but instead allow me to talk about whomever I’m dating at the time. It’s only my cool lesbian aunts who’ll be more forthcoming with a direct question like, “Where’s Your Boyfriend?” and “Why didn’t you bring him?” Honestly, I love my family, but I’d rather save the BF from having to go through that at least until we’re married (if we go down that road).
George’s Christmas tradition is to go home to Wisconsin and hang out with his parents on Christmas Day along with a handful of family members. They usually have dinner then “watch a bunch of episodes of CSI” until they fall asleep. “Really exciting stuff… yeah!” he cynically has told me. For the most part, I trust his advice that – should we be together the following year – this is something I SHOULD miss.
We did talk about exchanging gifts when he came back in to town, which was good enough for me. At the moment, spending Quality Time together on the day of wasn’t necessarily a priority.
What Should I Get Him for Christmas?
When I thought about choosing a gift for George I initially worked my way backwards thinking about what I already learned about his lifestyle remembering most of the details of our dates. For one thing, he lived on a boat – he was master and commander of the seas where the spirit of freedom, adventure and exploration of possibilities are values upheld by him. Though he isn’t necessarily going to drop everything and sail around the world anytime soon, the idea that at a moment’s notice he could pick up and leave is what means the world to him. Just like that – gone if he wants to be.
Further enforcing my thoughts on what realm the appropriate gift would fall under was the fact that when we began hanging out he was very proud to show me his fixed-gear “fixie” bike, which he expertly restored himself (we met at an off-Capitol Hill gay urban cyclist meet-up) in addition to him having a motorcycle as his primary mode of transportation. Vividly, I can still recall the first time he came by my house for our date in his black leather jacket on his Honda moto. I thought to myself, “This guy is a total rebel.”
Subsequent dates revealed things about him such as growing up in the mid-west from a small town in Wisconsin making the decision to move out West to see what life was like out here in Seattle because he heard “it was really cool”. There being absolutely a lack of quality gay men in his area was yet one other reason to move. In the end, it was only knowledge about another friend living in the Emerald City that provided enough motivation to propel him to relocate.
I learned he majored in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin – Oshkosh, so he was certainly an intellectual. He also was well-read (yes actual books!) from the collection I saw aboard his ship, Lunasea. We garnered much conversation about Henry David Thoreau’s book, Walden, which later became our minimalist treatise in response to the consumer-driven mentality of what we’d observed from the majority of our peers. Although George was a DIY kind of guy who made boat repairs and upgrades with his own two hands, I also knew he was, what I like to call, ‘cerebral’… to contemplate… to muse… to ponder. George had many thoughts and opinions afloat in his mind from all this knowledge he’d taken in.
But wisdom is the application of that knowledge.
I thought about how he has so much potential – he might want to go out and use it to do something cool.
The major tell for me when narrowing down the gift options was when George shared with me how when he first moved to Seattle, his motivation was to find work and gain a sense of ‘stability’. Having achieved this initial goal felt great. But now what? He admitted to me he needed some goals. Currently, he honestly couldn’t say he had any goals at this point in his life. This was what cemented it for me in terms of my decision of what to get him.
Being a very goal-driven individual who is ever-evolving, I place a high-value on knowing myself and knowing where I want to go and who I want to be (when I grow up). I’ve enjoyed many mornings spent journaling over coffee staring out my window looking out at Gas Works Park thinking about what I want to do, be and have then checking in with myself to make sure I really do want what I want OR if anything has changed. My intent was to pass on a tool for self-reflection if that was what I observed correctly.
Another great built-in “expectation buffer” was we were a newer relationship, so he asked me up-front if we were going to exchange gifts and whether or not we should set a limit. I think it made sense to set a limit. At $30, this kept the playing field fairly easy to not “out-gift” the person… you know what that means. The feeling of trying to not be overzealous, but be on par with expectation.
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SideNote: After having one too many make-out sessions on my couch got interrupted by a Pandora commercial to “try the new Bank of America mobile app” or “make a stop at Panera bread”, George wised up and bought me a one-year subscription to Pandora and we lived happily ever after (or just had better sessions moving forward) 
He’s the practical type.
But he also did get me a community cookbook from a church his Mom worked at in his town, which was super duper meaningful since I myself am very into cooking and eating well.
He’s also sentimental. Aww…
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After all these considerations about him, what points did I keep in the back of my mind that narrowed this gift selection down for me?
1) He’s a rebel/explorer kind of guy (who’ll go on more adventures)
2) Likes to work with his hands / do-it-yourself DIY (fixed his boat, motorcycle, bike)
3) Need some open-ended direction (plot his course)
4) Has to be small and not take up too much space (lives on a boat)
5) Needs to be under $30 (we agreed to this)
Ultimately, I wanted to give a gift, which held as much in the arena of sentiment and intrinsic value as it did in practicality and functionality.
This gift was one where I also explained the rationale, so that he understood a lot of thought went into choosing something for him. Even with our best intentions we can’t always hit the nail on the head, but if they know we tried I think it’s our Spirit of Giving and where our hearts are when we give to the other person that is important.
I gave George a beautiful journal with nautical/bicyclist/travel themes as well as a handmade hexagonal wooden pencil by Worther so he could plot his course, chart his path and make plans for his next adventure.
