why so holly jolly?

al asked me the other day why i like christmas so much. this is one area where we differ - he's completely ascetic, could live in a box with one set of clothes, eating the same food every day ... his family doesn't really do presents for birthdays or christmas, i'm guessing partly because of financial reasons and partly just because his father is ascetic. not sure. but me, i'm the opposite ... i love presents, shopping for presents, making presents, wrapping presents. obviously, who doesn't like receiving presents...but just in general...i live for this time of year.

so besides the obvious answer of jesus came to earth joy to the world - what is it about the christmas season that makes me so holly jolly?

i was originally going to make shoeboxes for op xmas child for al's church, which was the first time i'd heard about it. as i put some things together, it turned out that my church was going to do it through a tlc-wide effort. amazingly enough, we were able to make something on the order of 25 boxes in a night of wrapping paper carnage and a heap of school supplies, toys, and bathroom products in my living room. (there's a spot on the floor that still smells like dove soap).

the cousins asked me to make a wishlist so they could figure out what to get me this year - and btw on principle on hate making wishlists because i'd prefer that people would put thought in on their own - but nonetheless i started making a list.

it's kind of hard to make a list of what i would like to receive. there are things that i need around the apt or things that i want - but honestly speaking if i really wanted something i would just go out and get it. if it's too expensive for me to get, then i certainly wouldn't expect someone else to get for me. aside from a list full of items like "for sam to finish the scrapbook she was making that illustrated how much she loves me" and other sentimentalities ... i don't have much to request.

when i think about the most meaningful gifts i've received in my lifetime ... they would boil down to a few very memorable ones:

-lspero's 'mix of awesomeness' that she made for me before i went to my last team trials, where she interviewed various people at the dojang and who've been important in my tkd career for thoughts, encouragements, and roasts about me and then used her sound editing abilities to create a cd full of songs people wanted to send me, as well as edited pieces. she managed to capture the essence of why i competed and taught, and perhaps the essence of who i am - and reminded me of it in the pinnacle of my career. unfortunately it ended terribly with getting my knee kicked out and my heart broken - but in the end, it was much more bearable knowing that i had all these people behind me ... and that because it was meaningful to them, it was still meaningful to me.

-bbren's sparky book of photos and people's impressions of me when i left boston in 2004. for many of the same reasons that the audio mix was meaningful, it captured that my existence had been meaningful, significant, and appreciated.

-jaac's pink nintendo ds one xmas, along with my favorite game of all time, big brain academy. perhaps the extravagence of it threw me off, or the sheer ridiculousness that i would be carrying a hello-kitty-pink thing around and get laughed at ... but even that was meaningful to me, as he had always told me that my inner emo-color was baby pink.

-the ipod nano my teammates got for me last year for my birthday to replace the nano i had lost...not so much for the nano itself, but because they had it engraved with 'handy smurf' (an inside joke on my obsession with smurfs that year and the fact that i had broken my hand) and my email address - in case i lost it again.

-the year my jewish family got me the tiffany's elsaperetti cross necklace - only to find that the one piece of jewelry i already owned was that exact necklace in gold. (to this day, i have two pieces of jewelry and they're the same thing just in diff metals...haha). my jewish bro (then 13) had picked it out himself, and aside from it being a nice necklace, i just thought it was special because he had picked it.

-this one's pretty silly, and i don't even think i ever used it, but it was so cute. i had this tkd student who at the time was 7. she went with her mom to some fancy cosmetics and soap place and got me this fancy soap - so i could wash myself after i'm all sweaty after working out - because "you don't want to be stinky!"

i think of this year's christmas gifts, i'm pretty excited to see people open them. everyone makes fun of me for loving black friday so much but...finding gifts at great deals...it's like you took my 2 most satisfying feelings and mushed them together into midnight madness.

as i signed up to adopt a child thru al's church this xmas, i suddenly wanted to make more christmas child boxes. i figured, i had originally wanted to make them for his church, and despite the fact that our church made a whole bunch ... well, it'd be nice to bring at least one in to his as well. i was perusing the website and came across this video...which i guess encapsulates why i love christmas so much.

https://www.samaritanspurse.org/index.php/articles/seeing_through_childrens_eyes/