Scut Farkus

I know now, definitively and without question, that the proposition that hand-made Christmas gifts are the best because the effort and care that went in to making them reflects the givers affection and esteem for the receiver is a total lie.

Look, your typical public elementary school day, minus recesses, is still six hours of instruction time. If you then minus out the attentions of the teacher required to deal personally with the non-English speakers, the undiagnosed ADHDs and the run-of-the-mill stupid, that means all kinds of time to kill for those who are cursed with being literate and non-sociopathic. So when junior brings home a multi-colored sparkly-glued bouquet of decorative tissues in festive colors that looks like Rip Taylor's snot rag, you know the construction of it had less to do with effort and care and more to do with the fact that your kid needed busy work while Mrs. Johnson talked the cafeteria spork/prison shiv out of rambunctious little Billy's hand again.

That's why I don't even pretend. My boys come home from school, shaking with a combination of anticipation and diabetic shock (public school lunches in California are down to some kind of high-calorie carbohydrate paste made from soybeans and beets), they hand over whatever the hell my handmade "gift" is supposed to be and I usually have the same reaction: I examine it passively, set it to the side, take my boy's face in my hands, lean in close and whisper as supportively as I can "It's not that I don't like it. It's just that you will never be able to please me. Ever."

I figure that's what fathers are for. Read any kind of literature you like; it's all about larger-than-life, elusive, disappointing pater familias driving the protagonist with his emotional distance and impossible standards. Hamlet's dad even did it from the grave, the bastard. "What, they kill me and you just sit there feeling sorry for yourself? Get up, you pussy!" And then you know after all his effort, ending in his death, the first thing his dad did was bitch him out about killing everybody and leaving Denmark to get overrun by stinking Norway.

This year, for my parents, I decided I would DVD-ize my family videotapes. Effort? Yes, effort. Hours and hours of screening, followed by copying to digital, arranging, editing, time-stamping, creating screen titles and credits... and for what? I realized too late that I only ever cracked out the camera for birthdays and Christmas. Ha, eight hours of those two exact same events repeated on a loop with the only difference is that all the kids get progressively taller and the adults slightly fatter won't exactly be scintillating viewing.

It will disappoint. I know it. But it's still cheaper than actual gifts. And you can't beat single DVDs for shipping costs.

Happy Recession, everyone!