“One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” We’ve certainly all heard the saying, but I
can’t tell you who said it first. Each
year around this time lots of jokes are made about re-gifting presents that you
don’t like to others. Personally, I don’t
have a problem with that if it's done with the right intentions. In my opinion,
the person who gave it to you wants the gift to be put to good use. If you’re just going to hide it away and
forget about it, why not give it to someone who will appreciate it?
When I was 16 years old, I spent a year abroad as an
exchange student in Germany. I went from
being a city girl in Texas to living in a village of 800 people in a valley
north of the Alps. As one might imagine, the weather was a little different and
my thin Texas blood was not keeping me warm.
One day I received a package from home and it contained two wool sweaters
from my grandmother. They were
officially the most hideous sweaters I had ever seen. I felt so ungrateful that she had gone to so
much trouble to buy them and ship them to me, and I could not bring myself to
wear them. One of them was hunter green
with a giant bear with little plastic googly eyes that moved around on the
front of it. I don’t even remember what
the second sweater looked like. All I
knew is that I would not be caught dead wearing either one of them.
My plan was to stuff them in the back of my dresser for the
year and “accidentally” forget to bring them home with me. In November 1989, the Berlin Wall came down
and people began flooding from East Germany to West Germany with very few belongings. Friends of my host
parents arrived at our house with their two daughters and each of them only had as much as
they could personally carry in a paper bag.
The daughters were about the same age as I was and they were completely
fascinated to meet an American teenager on one of their first days of freedom.
They spent hours in my room looking at my stuff, playing my
music, and trying on my clothes. As they
dug through my dresser looking at my “American” things, one of the girls found
that stupid bear sweater that I had worked so hard to conceal. Her eyes lit up and she asked if she could
try it on. She slipped into the sweater, looked at herself in the mirror and smiled from ear-to-ear. Without a second thought, I asked her if she
would like to have it. She was dumbstruck. She could not believe that I would simply
give my sweater away. I assured her that
it was fine and I found something else to give her sister so she wouldn’t feel
left out.
My guilt over disliking the sweater was immediately washed
away. I made someone happy. That was the gift to me. The silly bear sweater had not been abandoned
in a dresser and gone to waste. While it
was certainly not my grandmother’s intention to clothe strangers when she sent
me those sweaters, her gift to me had resulted in a gift to others. I did not suffer or go without when I gave
away those items. In fact, I gained a
memory that endures.
During this season and throughout the year, I think it’s
important to remember how privileged we are and that we have an opportunity to make
others happy. It might not come in the
form of re-gifting a silly sweater, but, one way or the other, you’ll be given
a chance to brighten someone’s day. Take
the chance and run with it. It’s a far
better gift than the one you’ll find at the mall. As the saying goes, “It’s the thought that
counts.”
Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah, my friends.
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