What Should I Get For Christmas?
Every year, I make a big ol’ Greed List for Christmas, listing every consumer good I am currently lusting after. This is partially in the hopes that I shall be rewarded with presents, and partially because it’s an interesting way of charting my hobbies over the years.
And usually, at the core of that Greed List, are one or two big splashy items that the family can get me: Rock Band Drums, a straight razor shaving set, a king-sized bed.
This year? I can’t think of anything.
Oh, I mean, I can: I’d kind of like to have an XBox One – which, yes, I’ve railed about in the past. But though I wouldn’t want to buy an XBox One because I don’t think it’s currently worth the money, in my mind having one gifted to me is a separate experience. Yet there’s a better-than-even chance that the XBox One will be the loser in this particular console exchange, given the Playstation 4’s selling a million units on day one, and there aren’t any particularly compelling games for the console, either. So I’d be asking for a new shiny thing, at a pretty big cost, that might well turn out to be a regret. (The same could be said of purchasing the Playstation 4, which I’m hesitant to do because I have all of these Achievements on my XBox 360.)
And what I was hoping would be my Big Splashy Gift this year would be Google Glass, which I’m still ridiculously excited about… but the jerks at Google didn’t release it in time. (And if I’m balking at $500 for an XBox One, I’m not going to try for the $1500 of some beta version of the hardware bought on eBay.)
And the more I think about it, the more it seems weird not having a big-ticket item at the heart of Christmas. Because while my Amazon Wish List has been filled with all sorts of books I want to read lately, thanks to my new podcasting habits, if I got all the books on my Amazon list then I’d probably never read half of them. I have a bookshelf which I’ve narrowed down to “Books I’m so excited to read,” and I feel overwhelmed by the handful of unread tomes there as it is. So I’ve been reading a couple of books from there, then ordering a few – and having all the books I’m considering arrive at once would probably have some very good books lost in an avalanche as more new books came out.
I dunno. I feel like I should want one big thing on Christmas, some large-scale purchase that Gini and Mom and Dad can get me and then fill around the edges with two or three smaller purchases. But what the hell would that be? The industry’s let me down this year, and I can’t think of anything in the $400 range that would be sufficiently awesome.
It feels weird. I’ve had a Big Splashy on every Christmas list since I was a kid. And now, nothing. I mean, it’s the definition of a first-world problem and I acknowledge that, but it does take the edge off of Christmas to know that nothing in particular will be waiting for me beneath the tree.