Every gift is a carefully crafted choice but it is especially so when presents require the consideration and advanced-planning and hidden logistical of the postal imperium required to shuttle them along with the spirit of the season around the world. Advent (meaning
coming or
anticipation) is beginning just now and is reduplicated with ceremony over a thousand different venues and with ritual calendars everywhere, and it makes me wonder about sending cheer away and the atmosphere that can’t quite be distilled and dispatched.
Sending a gift is something that is instantly given form and one can and does imagine its safe passage, arrival, which is hopefully in enough time to relax under the tree and inspire some curiosity, and ultimate reception, even if one cannot be there to see all these stages in person. The packing and preparation ahead of time, depending on the length of the journey, does not take the wind out of the season’s sails, so to speak, but the earliness does abstract a bit the whole rite and intent to some degree, wrapping then swaddling a gift before setting it off on some grand and far-reaching conveyor-belt.
It would be a much better alternative to the posting presents, I think, if one could be like Santa Claus or gently float an entire palette of Christmas high enough into the stratosphere that the earth would rotate below it and the drop-point would come into range at a day’s pace, which sounds indutibably faster than guaranteed next-day-delivery under any circumstances. Still, the means readily available are a pretty good way to extend one’s presence and have good representation.
Sending a gift is something that is instantly given form and one can and does imagine its safe passage, arrival, which is hopefully in enough time to relax under the tree and inspire some curiosity, and ultimate reception, even if one cannot be there to see all these stages in person. The packing and preparation ahead of time, depending on the length of the journey, does not take the wind out of the season’s sails, so to speak, but the earliness does abstract a bit the whole rite and intent to some degree, wrapping then swaddling a gift before setting it off on some grand and far-reaching conveyor-belt.
It would be a much better alternative to the posting presents, I think, if one could be like Santa Claus or gently float an entire palette of Christmas high enough into the stratosphere that the earth would rotate below it and the drop-point would come into range at a day’s pace, which sounds indutibably faster than guaranteed next-day-delivery under any circumstances. Still, the means readily available are a pretty good way to extend one’s presence and have good representation.
