by Mya Greene (Mon Jan 18, 2010)
Christmas
is but a dim and distant memory. The tree is turning brown and crispy in the
garden, the full potential of the turkey has been exploited, your unwanted
presents are on eBay and the extra roll of flab around your girth is slowly beginning
to subside.
If you
are uber-organised, you will have kept a note of all the presents received at
Christmas, and will now be in a position to scribble a few appreciative words
of thanks.
If you
are totally disorganised (that's me,
folks!) you will now be in the rather more uncomfortable position of trying to
match up presents to people, and scratching your head thinking of a few bland,
non-committal words of gratitude for whatever the hell it was you received.
There
is a lesson to be learned here. And it's not a difficult one.
Make a bloody list!
Every
year, I fall into the same trap. I get dragged along amidst all the Christmas
morning excitement. I hurl myself into proceedings without a moment's thought. I attack the gifts piled around the tree and tear blindly at the wrappings,
liberating present after present....giving each one a perfunctory two seconds of
consideration before hungrily moving on to the next. I know, it's pathetic. I
behave like a 6-year-old. I should grow up.
And
now I'm paying the price. I have to write thank you letters. Not just for
myself, but for my son, too. He will physically write the letters, but he's not
sufficiently well disciplined to remember who gave him which present. He relies
on more responsible, grown-up type people to look after that side of things.
People like his mother, for example. Which is a shame, because I haven't a clue
where any of his presents came from.
There
are two methods of coping with this sorry state of affairs. You can do a sort
of personality-profiling exercise on the presents.... Is Great Aunt Charlotte
more likely to have sent the fragrant Bronnley gift set or the Kanye West calendar?
And who else apart from weird cousin Julian would have sent the Night Vision Goggles?
Or maybe it was Mad Uncle Jack? And would Grandma Greene have sent socks or
nipple clamps? Or both? This is a
risky strategy, and one that if you get wrong, is likely to cause offence.
The
second, much safer option is to dash off a cheerful missive that makes brief
reference to an unspecified gift....and then moves on swiftly to concentrate on
matters relating to the recipient. 'How are your bunions/share prices/
dahlias/batting averages?' type thing. This slick transferral of attention onto
them will make them feel loved, appreciated and valued. Yeah, I know.... I'm bad.
And I
have made myself a solemn promise. Next January I will not be in this position.
By then, I will have equipped myself with a smart little notebook and pen.
Therein will be the details of all gifts received, marked down accurately and
clearly. Never again will my thank-yous be misdirected.
But
that still leaves me with the one knotty problem of who exactly gave me the
glossy copy of the illustrated Kama Sutra? Is it creepy Uncle Leonard or tantric
Cousin Tania? And can I get away with just writing 'thanks for the lovely gift.
How is the garden these days'? Won't that make me sound not only incredibly
weird, but extremely sexually repressed too?
