Scan Magazine

By Mette Lisby

Is it just me… Who gets nostalgic as we speed towards Christmas?

I particularly remember one December where my – at the time 4 year old – sister, showed us an unexpected definition of the concept “presents”.

My Mom has a birthday in December andmy other sister and I were preppingmy 4 year old sister for Christmas, thinkingmy Mom’s birthday would serve as a nice introduction to the general idea of presents.

We had instructedmy youngest sister to find things that my Mom liked. Being the oldest I, of course, had performedmy family duties and bought a present from all of us kids, but there was still plenty of room for my youngest sister to come up with surprise-presents of her own. And surprised we were. We had imagined variations of the familiar and always popular “I made it myself” gifts such as “handprint in clay”, “pearl string” ormaybe even the always viable go-to-solution: “Drawing” – viable, that is for kids aged 2-7. Do NOT attempt to get away with this as an adult. Trust me; I learned the humiliating way.

When we sat down at my Mom’s birthday breakfast table, a staggering amount of clumsily wrapped gifts were scattered all over the table, and we were duly impressed bymy youngest sister’s level of productivity. Alsowe noticed that our salt and pepper cellars seemed to be missing, but we did not pay any further attention – there was cake.

The mystery was solved when my Mom opened her first gift which turned out to be the salt and pepper cellars – the old ones that had been sitting on our dining table for the past 5 years. “Wasn’t that a great gift, Mom?” my youngest sister inquired with great pride, “I KNEW you liked them.”

Apparently it hadn’t occurred to her that gifts are supposed to be NEW things. She had laboriously combed our house to find things she knewmy Momloved. Having received the better part of her original kitchenware plus two CDs, both her own,myMomcouldn’t help smiling, sitting there surrounded by all her favourite things. Actually it was a huge setback whenmy sister finally grasped the idea of “presents” and each of us received a very generous quantity of “noodles glued to matchboxes” for Christmas that year.