Santa brought some good gifts this year, but some wallet busters, I might add. I’m not that happy with the presents given to my wife, who I think deserves much better than she got. Simple presents, but stuff she wanted, appeared under the Christmas tree. Goodies included a delightful iPod case, CD, and DVD.
For my daughter, my wife took care of the thoughtful presents, while I tackled the tough task of finding adorable and unexpected manga items. Through Google search, I found many of the gifts, some purchased on eBay and almost all paid for using PayPal, regardless of seller.
Headliner Manga presents included a Di Gi Charat wrist watch from AnimeGamers and two sets of Yujin Bintyoutan Moe collectibles. While happy with the authentic Di Gi Charat watch, I had to get a new battery and put on a finer quality and smaller band suitable for an 11 year-old. Bintyoutan figurines were the big Christmas surprise. The characters are not among those that my daughter is familiar with. The genre is similar to Bottle Fairy, Di Gi Charat, and A Little Snow Fairy Sugar, which are among my daughter’s favorite manga and anime series. I could find out almost nothing about Bintyoutan ahead of Christmas. Today, after further investigation, I discovered that the characters are from a new Japanese anime series.
My expected big present was a Canon EFS 60mm f/2.8 Macro USM lens, which I used to snap pics of Bintyoutan figurines accompanying this post. The lens exceptionally delivers rich color and great depth of field. My daughter gave the surprise present, a darling hedgehog puppet by Folkmanis. I don’t recall liking stuffed anything as a kid, so I should be way too old for Mr. Hedgehog. Apparently not, because I really like the little guy.
As for giving, we still have presents to distribute, and, as always, gift giving was the season’s top priority. I would rather have no presents, but be Santa to plenty if given the choice. My parents divorced when I was 13, and my mom became the sole provider for four children. During my middle teens, she couldn’t afford to provide any Christmas. Not that I really minded. I was older and just happy to be together as a fractured family.
But those Christmases were hard for my younger sisters. We were all in want at a time of plenty, and the experience left enough impression that giving is my holiday priority. Give, give, give, we should do year ’round. Why reserve generosity for the holidays? Christmas present should be every day.