Giving and receiving - a pleasure of living

a hand made Christmas gift 2011

Sigh. Christmas has been and gone for another year, and I am blown away by the number of people I have spoken to who admit they no longer do Christmas. Jaded by the commercialisation of Christmas possibly, or a number of other reasons, and I have to admit, that in my family of two (my daughter and I) we no longer go to that much trouble. It has been years since I have bothered or tried to go the whole nine yards, and I have always been a fan of not imitating the northern hemisphere's Christmas carryon anyway with Christmas roasts and multiple courses, since on our Christmas days it is usually scorching hot - here in New Zealand it is summer. Even personal traditions have gone by the wayside for me, like having a dip in the sea on Christmas day. Instead we try to keep things simple and unique to us - we indulge in as much delicious summer fruit as comes our way (from friends popping in with a surplus from their trees or gardens) and stay as lazy as possible on the actual day.

cherries from Brian's trees

I very rarely shop for gifts, nor expect them as I have everything I need. But we do have a bit of a family tradition of making our own. To me it is an excuse for using the best quality art materials I can afford to create something which hopefully my loved ones will treasure. I am sure to write on it "Limited Edition" too :) and this Christmas, apart from a gift from my mother, I even received home-made gifts from a friend which were the most delicious treats ever - how lucky I am to have friends who also love making their own gifts, it is so enriching for ourselves and hopefully our recipients. And I am happy to say that apart from the gift from my daughter, that was it. On the day, my siblings and I catch up by phone, and we are all so happy to leave it at that without cluttering each other's houses.

Sometimes I think I have bitten off more than I can chew with my gift-making, and wonder if I will get them done in time, and posted out. But I can relax about that, I didn't get the one for my friend in Australia sent in time, but, oh well, she won't mind. And around this time before Christmas my daughter, now 16, is squirreled away in her bedroom, with panicked shouts of "don't come in!" if she hears any steps outside her door. So has she taken to dealing drugs or other secret activities she does not want me to know about? Not at all, she was working on her handmade gift. She outshines me every year, producing the most wonderful picture books on fine art paper, coloured in with Lyra pencils. I have a wee collection now, and they never cease to amaze me. This year, she did a Latin alphabet book, here are some of the pages. She completed a university paper called Image and Narrative at Canterbury when she was 14 as a special admissions student, and as you can see she has used a bit that she learned there, such as "breaking frame" and "rule of thirds" in some of her images. I just love it. Beware, the camera doesn't do these justice, but I'm posting them anyway. They are hand drawn with vivid quality pencils on high quality cotton-based fine art paper. In these photos you can't really tell that, although if you click on them you can see an enlargement.

Some of the pages from a home made Christmas gift created by my daughter, an enthusiastic student of Latin

In the next post, I will show you the gift I made and explain the steps of making it, so if you are interested, please watch this space.