Although my father is one of the world’s great technology buffs, there was one innovation my family never adopted. It was the “Christmas list.” All my friends had one, and I was frequently bitter about it. A Christmas list guaranteed you the top item on your list, and you were likely to get the top five! But my parents held firm; in my house you never knew what you were getting for Christmas, and oddly enough, it made Christmas more fun. Since we were never given instructions, we spent months in furtive observation of our family members, filing away pieces of conversations for gift ideas. Sometimes the results were great, and sometimes they weren’t, but opening presents was always exciting. Even better than receiving the perfect gift was being acclaimed as the giver of the best gift of the year (defined as the funniest, most appropriate, or most ridiculous). My father, incidentally, received many of the “best” gifts as well as most of the worst, the result of having hobbies which were well out of his children’s price range, forcing them to become extra-creative.
This entertaining tradition unfortunately began to die a slow death when my sister went off to college and was embalmed soon after my graduation. Without the close contact with our family, we could no longer pick up subtle clues about what they might want but wouldn’t think of buying, and as a family were reduced to giving gift cards (which are very useful, but on the fun-of-giving scale rate as pathetic). My sister rescued us all one year when she discovered the WorldVision Gift Catalog, which allows you to buy a gift for a person who truly needs one, in honor of your loved one. The next year my parents bought “me” a camel. We gave my public-school principal mother-in-law a new school. It was a wonderful new world of finding the perfect gift.
Almost all charities will accept donations in someone’s honor. We’ve now given gifts which give life-altering surgery to children, counseling to women rescued from the sex trade, harvest-enhancing seedlings to struggling farmers, and better lives to children in orphanages. And we’ve discovered fair trade gifts as well.
Fair trade means that the company is certified as treating its workers “fairly”, by paying them a living wage and not exploiting children, among other requirements. Many fair trade organizations also use environmentally sustainable methods. By providing a market for their goods, we improve their lives and often our own. For example, buying fair trade coffee will pay the coffee farmer a living wage. If by farming coffee he earns enough to feed his family and send his children to school, he may not feel compelled to farm cocaine. The Hunger Site, SERRV International, and Ten Thousand Villages are examples of groups which offer a large variety of fairly traded products.
This year I began my Christmas shopping with the philosophy of fair-trade first. Our current gift-list is 90 percent charity contributions or fair-trade gifts. These gifts are often more inexpensive than a sweater, but they are much more meaningful (unless you count the fair-trade sweater I’m considering for my sister’s birthday)! Which person on your gift list deserves a gift truly worth giving?
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