Perfect Translation
Last week The New York Times ran an article—a “Guest Post”—that provided evidence, if it’s needed, that the company will remain in business long after any other newspaper. It’s a “gift” survey (although obviously timed for Christmas and Hanukah, that was too much for the editors, who ran the headline “600 Readers Told Us About the Best Gifts They Ever Got. These Are the Top 13,” which was Chinese in my book) and I read it, not unhappily. Who wouldn’t?
Eschewing irony, the article began with an admonition—“Right now, the internet is awash in click-to-buy gift guides”—that might be self-directed, since the Times is the champion of “clicks,” which didn’t really sting, since I appreciate a forward-thinking business model, one that a prestigious college might study in 10 years, if prestigious colleges are still doing that.
It reads: “Gift-giving is an art form. We can’t outsource it for convenience. [We can and do.] It’s an act of imagination and of attention to and observation of the person you love—or at least the person who you feel it would be observably rude to not have a present for. The truly great givers of this world know the secret: The best presents make the recipient feel seen.”
That last sentence is a lot of hooey—Oh, I feel seen and now I can’t unsee that!—and though the long article is simply random anecdotes, most of which would meet with the readership’s approval, it did make me ponder the premise and it was a diverting nostalgia exercise.
As a kid on Long Island, my parents did a bang-up job at Christmas. I loved going with my dad a week before Dec. 25th to the Village Green nursery to pick out a tree, and the best part, once we settled on a pine, was watching him good-naturedly haggle with the owner, and get a buck off the $7 sticker price. Afterwards, after the tree was set up and breathing, the canned vegetables came: helping him (like my four brothers had before me) string up outdoor lights on the shingles of the house and one bushy tree. It was always freezing, there was always a problem with light bulbs conking out, but eventually it got done and my mom had cocoa for me and a Manhattan for dad.
Best present of the 1960s? Easy: in 1965 I received a new baseball mitt and sled. A killer combo. As the family’s “baby” my loot was always under the tree, while the big boys had theirs on the sofas, which were splattered with caramels, Turkish Taffy, Atomic fireballs, Bazooka gum, chocolate babies and root beer barrels. After ripping pen the presents, dad would take over the kitchen and make waffles, eggs and bacon for everyone. He grinned the whole time, knowing it was a tradition we all looked forward to, and maybe, internally, pondering his fortune of a large family, since he was an only child during the Depression in Massachusetts and my grandparents weren’t a happy couple.
On the it’s more blessed to receive than give front—a low-ranked sin—in 1990 my wife presented me with an encased and preserved electric Blue Morpho butterfly while we were at the Hotel Imperial in snowy Vienna. It’s hanging on my office wall at home and I look at it every day. A couple of years ago my son Nicky gave me a framed photo of Bob Dylan, taken at the late-January 1974 show with the Band that I saw at the Nassau Coliseum. My younger son Booker handed me a copy of Skippy Dies, which made me aware of the Irish novelist Paul Murray, whose later book The Bee Sting was my favorite of 2023.
I’m no Bad Santa, and have had a share of success in picking presents for loved ones. In 1969, I gave my mom a clay figurine of a dove, along with a (wretched but heartfelt) poem called “Mothers For Peace.” She beamed. Over the decades, I’ve picked out jewelry, books, albums/CDs, rare coins, provocative political t-shirts (no need to expand), vintage posters, specific DVDSs, European bathrobes and Limoges boxes. In 2000, each boy received a new dictionary: with a $20 bill inside. Nicky found the Old Hickory before noon, and kept reading, which tickled me.
The photo above (my Uncle Pete with his back to the camera, brother Gary and our mom) was taken at Uncle Joe’s Long Island house one Christmas evening so long ago that I’m lucky to have some mementoes of the occasion to stir the noggin.
Take a look at the clues to figure out the year: Smallpox kills 19 people in South Wales; confusing Panda crossings are introduced in London; BBC Television airs the first episode of sitcom Steptoe and Son; an agreement is made between Britain and France to develop the Concorde supersonic plane; Tom Cruise is born and Michael Curtiz dies; Taco Bell is founded in California; the Baltimore Steam Packet Company goes out of business; Jackie Robinson is inducted into MLB’s Hall of Fame; Sonny Liston knocks out Floyd Patterson in the first round; Vivian Vance, on The Lucy Show, is the first to portray a divorcee on television; John Ford directs The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance; Ally Sheedy is born and Charles Laughton dies; Lawrence of Arabia is the top-grossing film in the U.S.; Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook and Kurt Vonnegut’s Mother Night are published; Edwin O’Connor wins the Fiction Pulitzer Prize; and Question Mark and the Mysterians are formed.
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023