Gifts: After Emerson
Gifts: After Emerson
Our favorite gifts are the fruits of a friend’s heart and hands. How precious to us is the posy of a gardener’s own treasured blooms, the warm delectable brownies of the aspiring baker, the crooked little stitches of a young girl. We prefer the handwritten note on homemade stationary (however misspelled and smudged) to the store-bought images and jingles of the commercial card. This is not to say that we fail to duly appreciate the thoughtful purchase from the store, but we do hold a special place in our hearts for the gifts that reflect the life, talent, and love of the giver. These speak of forethought, care, and industry, and serve as very personal reminders of our friendships with the givers. We cannot see them without thoughts of our friends, and pleasant recollections are so bound up in these objects that we cherish them greatly and would be grieved if they were lost or damaged.
“Our tokens of compliment and love are for the most part barbarous,” writes Emerson, and too often we choose to stop by the local store and pick up generic “apologies for gifts” rather than to exercise the forethought and industry required to produce beautiful and memorable presents. Perhaps you think me sentimental - perhaps to the point of Romantic impracticality; but really, why not consider the interests and likes of your friend and how you can harness your talent to accomplish the kind of gifts she would cherish? It is a bankrupt life indeed that cannot understand how greatly the treasures of the heart - however poor they may seem in a material sense - outweigh the treasures of the world.
What do you enjoy - photography, drawing, sewing, needlework, pottery, writing, gardening, baking, music? As you plan your Christmas gift list this December remember this famous quote by Emerson.
Next to things of necessity, the rule for a gift, which one of my friends prescribed, is, that we might convey to some person that which properly belonged to his character, and was easily associated with him in thought. But our tokens of compliment and love are for the most part barbarous. Rings and other jewels are not gifts, but apologies for gifts. The only gift is a portion of thyself. Thou must bleed for me. Therefore the poet brings his poem; the shepherd, his lamb; the farmer, corn; the miner, a gem; the sailor, coral and shells; the painter, his picture; the girl, a handkerchief of her own sewing ... It is a cold, lifeless business when you go to the shops to buy me something, which does not represent your life and talent, but a goldsmith's. This is fit for kings, and rich men who represent kings, and a false state of property, to make presents of gold and silver stuffs, as a kind of symbolical sin-offering, or payment of black-mail.
Emerson in his essay “Gifts”
Text: Gifts: After Emerson. © Handmaidens of the Shepherd, November 2007.
Photograph: With Love. © Handmaidens of the Shepherd, December 2007.
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KAYLA H said...
What a great post! I agree wholeheartedly that gifts made with love are the most treasured. They are also more fun to give away!
Tuesday, December 4, 2007 10:41 AM
Tuesday, December 4, 2007