No Season For Gifting

Vahe H. Apelian

It is the season for gifting. In Lebanon then, maybe presently as well, we opened the season’s gifts not on Christmas day but on the New Year day. The gifts remained wrapped under the ornamental tree until the first day of the New Year. I say ornamental tree because Lebanese Muslims and Christians alike decorated a tree in their homes and in their business showcases. Let us not forget that the symbol of Lebanon is the biblical Cedar tree. The Christians included a nativity scene under the ornamental tree. 

Several incidences come to my mind about gifts and gifting.

I was in my HS junior or senior year when a guest came from the United States and stayed in the inn my father ran, the famed Hotel Lux. She said she had brought a gift to my friend and classmate from his relative in the U.S. I told him to come and pick the gift and he did. But he, I, and my parents as well were taken back when she presented the gift. It was a dispenser of single razor blades we used for shaving. This was fifty plus years ago and the United States of America was the distant land of milk and honey for us. My friend courteously accepted the gift, inquired about his relative but he left the dispenser behind when he took leave of us, letting us know that I can keep it or give it to someone else.  Surely there  was an element of understandable hurt there for having received shaving blades from his relative from the U.S.A. To ease him out of the situation I did not refuse him. The incident has remained etched in my memory. I refrain from mentioning my friend’s name. Many of my readers know him.

The second incident about gifting is a story our frequent Afghan guest to Hotel Lux, Mr. Mohammad Zaman, told us about the incident with amusement. There was a time when the United States and Afghanistan had warm relations.  President Eisenhower and his Vice President Richard Nixon visited Afghanistan. According to Wikipedia it was in 1953 when Vice President Nixon visited Afghanistan. It so happened that a high placed friend of Mr. Mohammed Zaman was designated as Nixon’s driver. The talk of those who knew driver had been the tangible monetary gift the driver would likely be receiving from the president of the U.S. Nixon at the end of his tour. But at the end of the tour, all that Mr. Nixon had presented to the driver to his astonishment was his personalized White House business card. The gesture had not only caused a huge disappointment if not an embarrassment to the driver but also to all those who knew him. I doubt that the driver could have made use of that business card then as a tender for a loaf of bread in Afghanistan. Gifts can be no gifts at all.

The third incident I remember about gifting happened to me in 1995/96, during my visit to Lebanon after an absence of almost twenty years. Throughout my stay there I became a guest of my cousin the Hoglinds and with a few other relatives. As a parting gift I bought a set of worry beads, or middle eastern social rosary to my elder relative who hosted me and I presented him the gift during after our lunch with his children and their families. He thanked me but not only he did not open the gift but took it to his room and left it there. I had forgotten that in Lebanon  we considered a gift a private matter and did not open it in front of the presenter of the gift especially if there was company. I am not sure if that was a universal custom in Lebanon but it was within my social circle in contrast to the expected customary proclamations of appreciation I had come to learn during the past twenty years in the United States where we unwrapped the gift we received and uttered our unabashed appreciation. Of course in doing so we show our appreciation of the gesture more so than to the gift itself.  I saw our elder relative using the worry beads the next day. It was not an ordinary worry beads. No word was uttered, but I knew he had liked it and had already started using it.

Gifting is an art and a difficult one at that. We naturally appreciate the thought and the gesture and yet we cannot discount the gift  as it may become the subject of our appreciation no less.  

As to that single blades dispenser, I soon realized that it was not the ordinary matchbox size dispenser. It contained far more blades than the ones we purchased from the store. Consequently I ended up using the blades from the dispenser for months and whenever I discarded the used blade and replaced it with a new one from the dispenser, I remembered the gift and I realized how a beautiful and thoughtful gift it was.

That incident also set a pattern for me. Next to books, on most occasions I gift razor blades. Things have changed, so have the razor blades. The single blade razor is now gone into history. A new generation of cutting edge technology houses up to five sharp edges on single blade. Such blades are a la mode nowadays and can be expensive.  One cannot go wrong with such a useful gift to the guys. 

But gifting books remain my favorite for books make for far more lasting gifts. Most may not be read, but they remain on a book shelf or somewhere in the house and pop out at an unexpected moment rekindling memories and remembrances. Recently my paternal cousin Ara Apelian, M.D., posted a snap shot of a book I have gifted him in 1992, thirty years ago. I realized  what I had suspected all along that books make for lasting gift is true. I do not remember the occasion but from the date I can tell it was not meant to be as a year end holiday gifting. Yes, there is no season for gifting.

As to gifting the gals, that is my wife’s domain and I pray it remains that way until the last days of my life.

Happy gifting.

noted: updated on December 28, 2021.