Here & Now #136: You gotta give

S Sorrensen

Lismore. Tuesday, 3.40pm

I have to buy Christmas presents. I know that. The thing is: I don’t want to.

My organised friends (I have two) have been picking up Christmas presents here and there all year. Imagine that. These people see something suited to one of their friends and they buy it. For Christmas. Even when there’s, like, more than two shopping days left.

One such friend was wandering with me through the Bangalow markets one Sunday in May. A bloke with bushy eyebrows and a missing finger was selling old rakes, machetes, posthole shovels, saws – that sort of thing.

I was attracted to a rake. I love old tools. But I have some unresolved issues about my yard. I say yard, but it’s more jungle than yard, more lantana than lawn. So, I’m in denial about it. I didn’t buy the rake, but my friend did.

‘A perfect Chrissie present for Gary,’ she said, laying a couple of notes across the bloke’s three fingers. ‘Gary loves gardening. Have you seen his yard? So neat.’

I hate Gary.

She bought the rake and stashed it away.

I’m not like that. I don’t plan for the future. I have no retirement savings, having lived off a credit card all my adult life, except for that decade when I was a hippie in the deep north where food was cheap and love was free.

I drink too much cabernet sauvignon despite the threat of diabetes, heart attack, memory loss, bed-wetting and a lonely death.

No, I don’t plan for the future. In fact, I don’t even like the future. I’m in denial about it. Have you read a newspaper lately? Or looked in a mirror? Oh dear…

When the supermarket started playing those awful Christmas tunes, I reckoned I had two months or so till the Big Unwrap. Then when Lismore Council erected the Christmas tree made from recycled bicycles, not only did I think it was the best street decoration I had ever seen, I figured I had at least 30 shopping days left till the prophet’s birthday.

But now, time has nearly run out.

So, while my organised friend is probably putting a bow around Gary’s rake with six shopping days to go, I’m freaking out. I’m frozen at the end of aisle nine in Bunnings with Christmas obligations bearing down on me like a climate-changed future.

I’m staring at an electric pedestal fan from China. It’s $11.90. How can that be? It’s cheaper than a watermelon.

Taking a deep breath (I wonder if there’s a Valium aisle…), I look at my list:

There’s the parents. Now Mum has told me that she doesn’t want a gift this year. Hmm. I smell a rat. It’s trap. If I actually didn’t buy her a gift…

Maybe she’d like a pedestal fan.

Then there’s the grandchildren. One year, rebelling against the overt consumerism of Christmas, I rejected regular presents. Well, I tell you, the look you get on Christmas morning when your granddaughter opens her card and realises she is supporting a child in India for a month – is not worth the $30.

‘Can I help you, Sir,’ says the assistant, a young woman trying hard to look like she really wants to help me. But it’s tricky showing sincere empathy when you’re wearing antlers, and have tinsel around your name tag.

‘No, not really, Leeanna. Unless you can explain how the birth of a man who despised the rich is cause for the biggest spend of the year, with huge profits going to Chinese businessmen who don’t even believe in Santa’s divinity.

‘If you need anything, Sir, let me know,’ Leeanna says backing away, shaking her antlers.