My family celebrates the holidays for all the wrong reasons. Buying gifts is treated like something that is owed to us. We send lists, and if someones list isn't met they walk around pouting the rest of the time.

My parents don't buy gifts to celebrate. It's almost like emotional bribes. They don't know how to interact with you like a human, so they buy you expensive gifts. But even that suffers. I found this year that all the gifts I received were purchased for me with me. We went to the mall because it was understood that i needed clothes. We purchased two pairs of pants and a shirt. We went to the bookstore, and i grabbed an edgar allen poe book. I asked them to split a digital camera with me, it's an excellent camera. These encompass all of the gifts that i received.

For me this is not about how much my gifts cost. I would love for their to be a level of intimacy with my family, a level of trust, acceptance. I would love for christmas to be a suprise. To not know what I was getting. To not have picked out everything for them. It makes me feel like they are the laziest people on the face of the earth, not to mention fake. But that's for another entry. It sucks the real meaning and love out of the holiday's!