During our near twenty years together my wife has been called upon to endure various doltish deeds of my devising, amongst the worst of which came during our first Christmas together in Louisiana, when, due to a misunderstanding, I gave her a toothbrush.
Nothing else. Just a toothbrush. Worse, this toothbrush wasn’t even useful. It was a novelty number made of carved wood, decorated with pink and green polka dots, and equipped with bristles made out of some kind of exotic animal hair (giraffe mane, maybe). In other words it was something no one in their right mind would choose to put into their mouth. To add insult to injury this toothbrush arrived beautifully wrapped, in a slender, rectangular display box that would put a sensible recipient in mind of a bracelet or necklace. It was simultaneously a candidate for Worst Gift Ever in several categories including Least Appealing, Least Useful, Least Romantic, and definitely Most Disappointing. God knows what I was thinking. Just putting it into words makes me cringe. And it will come as no surprise that seventeen years later, I have yet to live it down.
How did it come to this? My wife and I were married in 1995 and moved back to Louisiana having spent the best part of three years roaming the world with no fixed address. We had had a wonderful time working our way around Europe and Australia, eking out an existence waiting tables and washing dishes—but it was hardly a lucrative way to live. So by the time we came back to Louisiana to settle down we were effectively penniless. I am inclined towards literal-mindedness, so when in the leadup to that first Christmas my wife said something like, “Since we don’t have any money, let’s not buy each other Christmas presents this year,” I failed to understand that she didn’t really mean it. That this was a gesture of solidarity in the face of our shared circumstance rather than a proposed course of action. And that, after making this announcement she would actually go forth and buy me something really quite nice. As would my new mother-in-law, and my new sister-in-law. All while I was dithering around not buying anyone Christmas gifts and congratulating myself on having married into a family pragmatic enough to have slipped the chains of commercialized gift giving in pursuit of a higher truth. But even while clinging to this delusion I was dimly aware that for a newly-minted husband/son-in-law/brother-in-law to ignore Christmas entirely would be a bad idea. So on Christmas Eve I had rushed into a gift shop in a panic, in search of some token long on whimsy and priced to fit within my nonexistent budget. And came home with a carefully wrapped … toothbrush. Christmas Day was, to say the least, awkward. I may not have been spoken to directly again until Mardi Gras.
We are told that the origins of Christmas gift-giving lie with the Biblical magi and their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh to the infant Jesus. Can you imagine the scene if a fourth one had showed up with a toothbrush? I bet he would have been told to wait outside. And lost his ‘Wise Man’ badge to boot. I suppose I could have tried to pass off my faux pas as the result of a cross-cultural misunderstanding—suggesting that I was raised by a tribe of peaceful, tooth-worshipping dentists (not far from the truth); or that in Australian society, novelty dental hygiene products are the traditional gift for celebrating the first year of marriage (two years: monogrammed floss; three years: his-and-hers root canals …). Having a funny accent and claiming that things are done differently ‘where I grew up’ sometimes proves a useful strategy when talking to public officials, officers of the Highway Patrol or politically belligerent party guests, since it distracts them from the point they are trying to make and allows the conversation to be steered around to kangaroos. But since (a) my wife had met my parents (who are in fact dentists); (b) she had experienced Australia’s wholehearted embrace of Christmas capitalism first-hand, and (c) archaeologists have found no evidence of toothbrushes serving as tokens of affection in any society, these all seemed thin defenses. And besides, I didn’t think of any of them at the time. All I could do was hang my head sheepishly and try to stay out of the way. I can only imagine what my new family were thinking.
Who was it who said that the true nature of mankind is to learn from mistakes, not from example? I hope I’m learning from mine. So between now and Christmas Eve I plan to devote considerable care to the craft of creative gift giving, and doing so in the spirit in which it was originally intended. Wise men should do no less.
Happy Holidays one and all; and as always, thanks for reading.
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