What is a gift? Is it a present, wrapped in pretty paper, dotted with a bow, and gladly given from one person to another? Or is it the giving itself?
Perhaps, it is the world around us. Surely nature, family, and a dog curled at your feet are gifts? Each with the added benefit of blurring lines between recipient and giver, making all of us better for it.
With Hanukkah upon us, and Festivus, Christmas and Kwanza waiting in the wings, the winter holidays are widely considered the pinnacle of gift-giving. This is the time of year when we show those we care about just how much, which isn’t to say their respective value is tipping scales against monetary equivalence (although, we do love a good gift card), but rather the thought behind it. Love doesn’t go on sale.
Far smarter people than myself have pondered types of gifts and the meaning of them. For instance, Fred Rogers once said, “One of the most important gifts a parent can give a child is the gift of accepting that child’s uniqueness.”
You can’t fit that in a box. If anything, it suggests life outside the box is what truly matters.
That seems a gift worth giving.
Another consideration: Maya Angelou said, “It’s one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive. Forgive everybody.”
Some gifts, it would appear, are harder to give than others—even if it is for yourself, which is a nice option. And like most of your best things in life, forgiveness is a gift that keeps on giving.
In our family, with the boys having grown bigger than the toy aisle, we tend to share gifts of need and experience. That is, new pants to replace those outgrown, or guitar lessons for expanding strings and soundtracks. More than once we have given to causes and organizations on behalf of one another, which, coincidentally, was also the unintentional foundation for the glorious return of the aforementioned Festivus.
This year, living in a community that is still fresh from tragedy—a mass shooting, followed a day later by deadly fires—we, the entire family, are again looking at holiday gift-giving as an opportunity to help those in need, not only strangers around the world, but friends and neighbors with faces we know.
I realize it may sound cliché or seem self-serving to write about gifts of time and acts considered charity, how it is far better to give than to receive, but the fact is, it’s true, and frankly, we all know it. Our kids know it, too, and they are watching, learning and questioning everything.
For example, what is a gift?
I’m fairly certain, it is anything you wish it to be.
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Photo by Kira auf der Heide on Unsplash
This post is in partnership with Responsibility.org as part of their Ask, Listen, Learn campaign. Our collective mission is speaking to kids about underage drinking and to promote responsible decision-making regarding the consumption of alcohol. It is a good cause.
If you would like to learn more (also, ask and listen) about underage drinking please connect with Responsibility.org and Ask, Listen, Learn on social media:
Facebook – @GoFAAR @AskListenLearn
Twitter – @goFAAR @AskListenLearn
Instagram – @go_faar @Ask_Listen_Learn
Whit Honea is the co-founder of Dads 4 Change and the Social Media Director of Dad 2.0 Summit. Deemed “the activist dad” by UpWorthy (and one of the “funniest dads on Twitter” by Mashable), he is a regular contributor to The Washington Post, The Modern Dads Podcast and author of The Parents’ Phrase Book—a practical guide to social and emotional learning. Whit’s fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and he is the 2015 winner of the Iris Award for Best Writing.
