We Three Magi

It's the midst of the Christmas season, which means visiting family and friends far and wide. A lovely, if stressful, time of year. And visiting all that family means that I've seen a wide variety of gift-giving traditions and their evolution over time. This has got me thinking.


We had no chimney, so we hung our stockings helter skelter around the living room. We always got fruit at the bottom, a Laura Secord chocolate Santa and a couple of small odds and ends, plus one big toy underneath - Santa never wrapped. My wife's family didn't want nail-holes in the mantle, so Santa made the trek upstairs and left sacs of fully wrapped presents outside their bedroom doors. My sister has a mantle (and no nail holes thanks to Lee Valley`s weighted stocking holders), while my brother's wife's family has a tradition of receiving one gift each on Christmas Eve (and the rest on Christmas day). Friends far and wide have reported so many traditions that I can only imagine how hard it is for Santa to keep track.


When I was young, receiving gifts was the greatest thing ever. As I got older I found a lot more joy in the giving. The past few years I've learned to enjoy time with family, and started to find the exchanging of gifts mostly an unpleasant formality. I bought nothing for anyone this year, and was fleetingly looking forward to receiving nothing in return.

My siblings and I (all of us packrats of varying degrees) had reached a point where we were exchanging gift cards of roughly equal monetary value every year and then buying ourselves dust-collectors. The logical path flew in the face of tradition, but we opted to eliminate gift exchanges amongst the adults and to focus on setting aside time as a family to enjoy together; we spend the money on the family cottage instead. My nephews still swap gifts with each other, but there are no adult gifts (and no gifts from adults to children). This was the compromise solution between logic and tradition. We are, I think, much happier as there are far less hurt feelings over underappreciated or unwanted gifts, and an increased focus on enjoying time together both at Christmas and throughout the year.

Other parts of my family have, over several decades, attempted to alter traditions that were never particularly well-established regarding gift-giving. Children-turned-adults, new family members and short memories have been the most frequent causes of change and turmoil. For the most part, my aunts, uncles and cousins are in agreement that exchanging gifts is largely unnecessary, especially since we see each other so infrequently; attempts to plan get-togethers this Christmas have revealed just how tense and stressful the situation is for us all.

These varieties of traditions got me thinking about the entire history of swapping gifts at Winter Solstice. George Strombo posted a good link a week ago about the history of Santa Claus, Father Christmas, and Saint Nicholas. It's a brief but excellent explanation of Northern European traditions, but none of it deals with the "original" gift-givers - the three magi / wise men / kings.

There's the religious interpretation of the gifts as evidence that the magi offered them to a heavenly ruler walking the earth - since the gifts are what would normally have been offered to gods or kings. (It seems that the oldest tradition of gift-giving is as homage to rulers and gods aka the host/hostess gift.) I'm sure some priest or bishop somewhere has spun out a decent piece on why it isn't sacrilegious for the rest of us to give each other gifts on Christmas - probably something to do with the life and lessons of Jesus teaching us that we're all worthy of each other's generosity and hospitality.

However, there's still the unsettling aspect to the story of magi. They gave the gifts, and a warning to Joseph and Mary that King Herod was angry. One can't help but think of the magi as the ancient equivalent of characters from The Big Bang Theory - bumbling socially awkward star-gazers. It's possible the gifts were mostly an apology for setting Herod's army loose on the baby saviour - "we screwed up, please take the money and run." Makes it kind of curious why we would want to celebrate giving gifts at Christmas if the first gifts were apologifts (aka apology-gifts).

Whether you prefer the traditional interpretation of the magi, or my revisionist apologift theory, remember the lessons your grandparents pass on about Christmas. There comes a time in everyone's life when they have received every trinket they could ever need (and thousands that they didn't), and they truly mean it when they say that they don't want any gifts. As we prepare to face our mortality most of us make plans to divest our worldly goods - one final, sometimes prolonged, disbursement of gifts to our loved ones - and the only thing we want is time. What matters most of all is time to spend with our loved ones (and some time apart so that we cherish the time together all the more).

My wife's grandmother was the most recent grandparent to make the announcement that she was no longer giving out any gifts (and the associated implication that she no longer wanted anything). Her final gift to me was a bottle of scotch, which I believe means that in addition to spending time with loved ones, you also need booze to make that time together both more and less memorable at the same time. (I have a feeling the fourth magi has been written out of history for his gift of alcohol and his unrepentant joie de vivre). Only time, and alcohol, will reveal if I have interpreted the lessons of the grandparents properly.

So take a break from your concerns about gifts (whether giving or receiving, too many or too few), and remember that all you need is love (well that and water, food, shelter, sleep and clothing).