Makin My List and Checking It Twice, Thrice...

Last year around the first week of December, I put in an order to the Baguio Country Club for 100 loaves of their famously yummy raisin bread.

By the third week of December, our family driver, Arnel, was making scheduled trips around town delivering the abovementioned loaves to various friends, an assortment of cousins, aunts and uncles, and former co-workers.

I was also in a frenzy, combing bazaars and malls for last-minute gifts for my immediate family and godchildren.

And that didn't even include the number of presents I had to buy for my current co-workers.

Our dining room table had morphed into Santa's worktable, strewn with gift wrapping paper, cards, and various gift-wrapping accessories like scissors, ribbons, and tape.

It was Gift Giving Gone Wild.

This year, I look back and think. I have not seen or hung out with 100+ people during the year.

You might say I'm a Scrooge, but this year, I am going to throw caution into the wind and apply the rule of Christmas Presence. Meaning, if I don't see you or your family during the month of December - when the Christmas parties, reunions, get-togethers start rolling in - then we must not be that close that we haven't managed to make the time to so much as catch up for coffee or a quick dessert to exchange presents. Busy schedules be damned. The holidays are supposed to be meant for people who matter to us. And making life better for others. And giving of yourself. Not 100 gifts sent out by routine to people who you haven't seen, probably will not be seeing for some time - because they are too busy, you are too busy, or you just plain don't want to make time for each other.

After all, if you matter to me, I sure as hell will be making the time to catch up with you during the holidays (and vice versa). I will even make a concession and consider the latter part of November or early part of January (for a post New Year celebration) as within the gift giving period.

But if we haven't made the time to meet up at all for the last quarter of the year, let alone the entire 2008, then it doesn't matter whether you've been good or bad. I'm not Santa Claus. So, me...I'm going for simplicity and crossing one more person off my gift list.

It just doesn't make sense to give presents mechanically and out of habit, does it? And all that spare change - or money that would have gone to buying gifts out of routine...I will make sure they find their way to a good cause and help some other people who are in need of something more than the obligatory fruit cake.