You have two choices, the Democrats or the Republicans.
For a group who revels in being known for their "bleeding hearts" the Democrats sure put up quite the fight over whether to exchange gifts among family members or to instead give to a charity this year. When we all get together there is a rather large group. To date there are 26 of us. Over the past few years we didn't have to worry about this as many went their own ways and were not able to get together for Christmas. This year is the first time in a while that we will have our family together in whole so naturally the Christmas giving question came up. In the past we have covered the whole gamut of gift giving games such as one year we each gave every one a small inexpensive gift that left each of us wondering what to do with half of what we got. We've drawn names but that didn't turn out so well when those who weren't as fond of each other as they might have been a different family member noticeably gave each other un-thoughtful gifts which brought out a lot of envy of the members who got great gifts. We've also bought gifts for our own sex and put them in a pile to draw numbers of who would go first to pick one. This worked out well for about half of us but some gifts such as those drawn by a fifty year old man and bought by a twelve year old boy ended up in several desperate attempts to trade with someone else.
But it was the last gift giving game that inspired my wife and I to bring up giving to charity instead. In that brilliant game we each bought a gift for a specified amount then on Christmas each of us picked a number determining the order we would chose a gift in. Who ever went first opened a package of their choosing and kept it. But as each higher number opened a package they were given the choice to keep it or trade it for something that someone else had already opened. I will spare you the details of dirty looks, arguing and lingering hard feelings to this day over who got the Antique Santa Cookie Jar but needless to say we won't be playing that game again.
We felt that with so many hurting in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy and the shooting at Sandy Hook that it would be a great idea to collect money from each person and send half of the collection to each of two charities that are helping the victims. It sounded like a reasonable way to give in the true spirit of the season, right? According to the Democrats, every one of them without fail, WRONG!
(I noticed the word Sandy twice there did you?)
And without fail every conservative was happy to see their money go to someone who needed it rather than spent in a way that would return something most likely not useful and meaningless to themselves. The long list of reasons that we heard against this idea ranged from "Little Brian will be so disappointed if he doesn't get a gift" (Little Brian was going to get plenty of gifts anyway and wouldn't it be a better gift to give little Brian's character a chance to learn to give to those in need?") to, "I treasure all of the gifts I have gotten over the years and I will be missing one from this year to add to my collection." (A statement that we know for a fact to be a lie being we have seen several of the gifts they received re-gifted over the years)
At last we put it to a vote which we believed would end the argument over it and unlike the nation the conservatives carried the vote and giving to charities won. That should have been the end of it we thought. And then my nephew, a poster boy model of the results of a progressive education, came up with the idea that the vote shouldn't count per person but that we should do it the way the states do and have one vote per family instead. His liberal math had taught him at least enough to know that if we followed that rule that it was likely the gift game would win. None of these people saw themselves as the insanely controlling gift greedy fools that they are throughout the process. Nevertheless the argument about whether we would play a gift giving game was still not over.
My wife and I being the hosts of the get together for Christmas dinner finally had enough and unlike Boehner and Obama we figured out a compromise. Those who wanted to give to those in need would bring a donation and we would follow up as planned in splitting the funds between two Charities. Those who wanted to give and get gifts were left on their own to figure out what ever kind of gift game they wanted to play and we didn't want to hear anymore about what ever they came up with. The Republican side of the family was happy with this resolution and I bet you can accurately guess how the Democrats felt about it but they got their way among themselves and so did we.
We expect them to put on quite a show of how thrilled they are with the gifts they get from each other at the get together and we expect them to ignore the collection of the money for Charity but that won't stop me from appealing to their bleeding hearts in front of the rest of the family on no less than Christmas day to ask them to give anyway. It will be a rare ego that won't give at least a little and the way I see it this is a win!
By Dale Barnes
Republican Christian, Family Negotiator, Compromise Winner
