Romulus' Livejournal

From Me To You Day
We need a new gift-giving holiday.

Every gift-giving holiday is centered on giving people what they want. You feed their whims and desires by satisfying one or more of them. The idea is to make them happy, despite whether or not what they want is necessarily good for them.

We need a day where you give people something that shares something *you* like, or something you think they should have.

See, I would love to do things like send copies of Inconvenient Truth or Sicko or a season of 30 Days or a copy of The God Delusion. Thing is, the people I would like to send these to -- not so much that I want to convert them as to understand what I believe -- wouldn't want them. So, it's unsuitable as a gift for any existing holiday.

Of course, parents do sometimes give their kids gifts they think they should have (hopefully in addition to the things they want), in an attempt to expose them to a positive influence (i.e., an influence the parents think is positive).

I'd like to do that to some of my family. But doing it on birthdays, parent's days, and Xmas comes off as pretentious and rude.

So instead, we should have a "Share Yourself" day, where you gift people you love things that reflect who you are -- instead of who they are. Or rather, and here's an interesting point, who you *think* they are. Wouldn't it be nice to know, in a non-off-putting way, that your grandson is vegetarian and might not appreciate you donating a cow to an Indonesian village in their name (granted, maybe that was for milk)? Or that your grandson is atheist, and doesn't really enjoy all those religious Chicken Soup stories you've been forwarding him? Etc.? Wouldn't it be a great way to know others better, instead of maintaining and perpetuating your misconceptions because they don't know exactly a nice way to tell you how off base you are about them?

So. Share Yourself Day. Send your loved ones a gift that reflects yourself instead of your impression of them. All that's needed now is a day....

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