I probably should start my Christmas shopping at some point but the process–of deciding and going to a mall and having to potentially buy meaningless items just for the sake of needing to give a gift because Christmas says you must–makes me procrastinate day after day after day.
Do we need to do this every year?
Don’t get me wrong. I LOVE the spirit of Christmas–the sounds and smells and tastes. I love the meaning of Christmas even more.
And giving feels good. You know, when you are actually giving the item, in that moment, when they are opening it and when they say “Oh, I love it, thank you so much.” (Thank goodness we are all so polite when we receive a meaningless item we don’t really want.)
Nothing feels much better than giving.
But shopping sucks. And I’m a single dad. That means I have no wife to do the Christmas shopping for me. Worse, I have no wife to wrap the gifts. I think wrapping is worse than shopping. 
I don’t know if I despise the shopping itself, or the mental toil of having to think about what meaningful gift to buy for my loved ones. And, again, I don’t want to give a meaningless gift and that makes it hard.
Bree is 20. What to buy a 20 year old woman?
Edison is 17. Cash or a gift card would be fine with him, but, nothing special there. No thought behind the gift.
Elliot is 14, almost 15. He is always buying something on Amazon. But there are quite a few items on Amazon to choose from and I don’t know which one to get him
Mom is still recovering from her stroke and I’m not quite sure if she will even understand the idea behind giving. But I’ll get here something anyway because I’ll feel guilty if I don’t.
Dad has everything. I always get him a book or a Starbucks card and he seems happy enough with that so I’ll buy him a book or a Starbucks card.
My three sisters, Carla, Andrea, Teresa. More women to buy for.
Their three husbands, Tim, Derek, and Darin.
My nieces and nephews Isaiah, Dylan, Justis, Beatrix (she’s in France), Blake, Julia.
The default iTunes gift card seems so cold.
And certain friends and work colleagues, and I’m not sure if they’ll hand me something on Christmas Eve then I’ll feel like a chump cause I didn’t get them anything.
I have a week to go.
Giving is better than shopping.