About a decade ago — I don’t recall the year exactly — I decided to reconcile my differences with the Christmas holidays. That decision resulted in a new family tradition. The Christmas Box.
I never intended the Christmas Box to become a family tradition. At first, it was merely a goofy idea. I never expected anyone to take it seriously.
Maybe that’s how most family traditions get started? Someone’s goofy idea?
Clarissa and I had grappled with our different feelings around Christmas, for 30 years. For Clarissa, the holiday was a prime opportunity to practice one of her favorite pastimes: giving gifts — often, handmade gifts — to family and friends.
For me, Christmas was the paramount manifestation of American consumerism — an unfortunate exhibition of conspicuous consumption disguised as a cheerful (but sometimes stressful) celebration.
In other words, the generous, joyful Ghost of Christmas Present had somehow gotten herself married to miserly Ebenezer Scrooge.
Another difficult aspect: we generally spent a portion of the holidays for Clarissa’s parents (with whom I had a somewhat adversarial relationship) or with my parents (with whom Clarissa had a somewhat adversarial relationship.)
One year, I simply announced that I would no longer celebrate Christmas. The rest of the family was welcome to continue their seasonal activities, but they should not expect my participation. An uneasy, unilateral truce, but a truce nevertheless.
The clash of temperaments around Christmas was resolved to some degree, when Clarissa and I got divorced and went our separate ways. But not totally resolved, because we still shared children, and grandchildren.
And Christmas kept coming around, year after year, with its expectation of gift-giving.
I’m not sure exactly why I decided to host a Christmas Box. Like I said, it was just a goofy idea at first — partly a way to poke fun at the whole gift-giving tradition, and partly a way to actually participate in the tradition, but with tongue firmly in cheek.
The concept was simple. Go out shopping with the intention of filling a box with totally random items — either useful or useless, silly or serious — each costing $5 or less.
(This was back in the days when you could actually find items costing $5 or less.)
The only criteria, other than price: the item had to strike me as having some redeeming value, either practical or aesthetic. Or else, as being something few people would ever want. (Obviously, if something is for sale, then someone, somewhere, presumably wants it.)
Sample items:
A roll of double-sided Scotch tape.
A tube of Tom’s of Maine natural toothpaste.
A book from the “free books” shelf at the library.
A miniature “Etch-A-Sketch” game.
A box of paper clips.
A bottle of chewable Vitamin C tablets.
A package of birthday party balloons.
A tin of sardines.
A pack of Post-It-Notes.
A DVD from the Walmart bargain bin.
A small roll of 18 gauge steel wire.
A box of Superhero band-aids.
A rusty second-hand screwdriver.
Etc.
One of the project goals was to make sure I supplied a gift to everyone in my family, without actually buying anyone anything they really wanted. So the box was not wrapped, but was set out in the center of the living room, where everyone could see all the items and begin considering which item they wanted to possess. (Who can turn down a tube of natural toothpaste? Or Superhero band-aids?)
Beginning with the youngest person, we all took turns choosing one item from the box until everyone had had a chance to pick three items. (‘Three’ being a magic number of some sort.)
The first year I presented the Christmas Box, the family was slightly confused by Bill’s goofy idea, but they nevertheless played along to humor me.
Even Clarissa played along.
As the years went by, additional grandchildren and visiting family members and friends partook in the game — it really was more like a game than anything else — and the box grew from a small wooden grate to a large plastic tub overflowing with silly-or-serious little gifts to choose from..
Last Christmas, there were about 20 participants in our living room, and several families contributed items to the box.
Then 2025 arrived.
I’ve been following the news pretty closely over the past few months, and a verse from a Joni Mitchell song from 1971 has been stuck in my head.
Sitting in a park in Paris France
Reading the news and it sure looks bad
They won’t give peace a chance
That was just a dream some of us had…
Even half a world away from a park in Paris, the news looks bad in 2025. And it’s not only ‘peace’ that’s a concern.
But if we want to believe what we’re told, Americans still went holiday shopping this year. From a story by Melissa Repko and Gabrielle Fonrouge on CNBC.com, December 16:
Big-box and club retailers, including Walmart, Best Buy and Costco, topped Wall Street’s quarterly sales expectations, and executives said they saw an encouraging start to the crucial shopping season… “I know everybody’s looking for cracks in consumer health,” Walmart CFO John David Rainey told CNBC in late November. “It feels pretty consistent to us.”
Some executives also said lower-income consumers, who have felt economic pressures most acutely over the last year, have kept spending.
“The headline is that we feel very good about the lower-income customer,” Burlington Stores CEO Michael O’Sullivan said when the company quarterly results last month…
A week ago, I told my family I didn’t intend to bring out the Christmas Box this year… partly because the game feels less “silly and goofy” than it did when I first started it… and partly because I don’t feel like playing into the “Americans as Consumers” agenda promoted by our economic system.
Yesterday, my daughter asked me to reconsider. Everyone in the family wants the tradition to continue, she informed me. Everyone.
We drew up a list of the number of friends and family members who are expecting to play the game. 15 people.
Okay. We can do it again, at least for one more year. Who know where we’ll be next year?