For now, I have not given anything to myself, as a sign of austerity. Additionally, we have canceled the family trip and obtained a refund for the air tickets. We will spend the holidays on this island, this neighborhood, this city where I have lived for thirty years. In times of crisis, it is time to travel less.
However, I have not wanted to use the ax to make firewood from the gifts of my wife and my youngest daughter, who live with me. This afternoon we went to buy them. The weather was splendid, the decoration and music of the stores were conducive to carefree happiness, I told them to choose whatever they wanted, without stopping to look at the prices. Our daughter, very judicious, chose makeup products. My wife bought some slippers and a silk scarf. I decided that they deserved all the best because the effort they make to accompany me in this house is of inestimable value.
To my older daughters, whom I will not see at these holidays, because they will be with their mother in the city of dust and fog, far away where we have not wanted to go, I will send them the usual French perfume, Hermès. It is not a spectacular gift, nor a negligible one. It is a gift that delivers. My assistant, when buying the perfumes, asked me if they should be fifty milliliters or one hundred milliliters. I didn’t doubt it. If we chose the fifty ones just to spend less, my daughters were going to feel not flattered, but offended, since I have always given them that perfume, from that brand, in a hundred milliliter presentation.
However, I must confess that I was overcome by stinginess when choosing, through my assistant, the gift for my mother. Normally she would have given him, like my daughters, a hundred-dollar Hermès. But since I’m in crisis and have to cut my expenses by twenty percent, my maid and I decided that we would buy my mother a hundred-dollar Clinique perfume, which cost half the price of Hermès and looked presentable. I offer heartfelt apologies to my dear mother.
My biological family is very large. I have seven brothers, six sisters-in-law, a wayward sister and an artist brother-in-law. In other words, this forced me to buy, in total, fifteen gifts for adults. However, I am not going to give my wayward sister anything because she is estranged from the family over money issues and because she made the mistake of suing the family, demanding more money, a lawsuit that she has currently lost and will force her to pay fortunes in the legal costs of the parties in litigation. Consequently, she had to get fourteen gifts for the brothers, the sisters-in-law and the artist brother-in-law.
Normally I give my brothers Hermès or Ferragamo ties. This time I gave them each a Ferragamo tie. But I have allowed myself a mischief that I hope they do not notice, when opening their gifts. They are not new ties. They are used. I’ve used them on television, night after night. They are, therefore, busy, and also impregnated with my drool, my gestures and my bipolar energy. To hide the fact that they are second-hand, my assistant has placed some ribbons with the price on them, a nice courtesy of a salesperson from the Ferragamo store who gave them to us. Since my seven brothers do not read this weekly column, I hope they do not realize that the ties have already been premiered on my program and, more than a gift, they constitute a cultural legacy or a donation of uncertain value.
To my sisters-in-law, in times of prosperity and splendor, I gave Hermès silk scarves or perfumes from that brand. But since I am in lean times, and the only fat cow in this house is myself, I have bought all my sisters-in-law, following the wise advice of my assistant, some Jimmy Choo brand perfumes, which I had never bought before, which They were on sale and cost a third of what the hundred-milliliter Hermès cost. On those six Jimmy Choo perfumes, which cost even less than the Clinique for my mother, I spent, in total, barely three hundred dollars, at fifty dollars each, and if I bought the Hermès I would have spent one hundred and fifty dollars for each sister-in-law, that is a whopping nine hundred dollars in total. I hope that my sisters-in-law do not feel demeaned or undermined by that brand, Jimmy Choo, founded in London by a Chinese Malaysian of dubious reputation, but the ax in those six perfumes has allowed me a not inconsiderable saving of six hundred dollars.
I have also saved considerably on gifts for my nephews, who are numerous. I will not give anything to the four daughters of my wayward sister because we are officially fighting, although I no longer remember why we distanced ourselves, I only remember that they sent me a letter telling me that I did not know love, an observation or a philosophical objection that I do not know whether I would be able to refute. But, with the exception of them, my nieces and nephews are many and they all deserve a gift, of course. The official count is that there are eight male nephews (and all very male, none of them have turned out as softened as I have) and twelve nieces, that is, a grand total of twenty young people and children to whom I naturally wanted to give a good gift. But good gifts are expensive and the mantra I profess these days of wild materialism is the same one announced by the Argentine president: there is no money this Christmas.
As it is, I have given my eight nephews, so dear to all of them, a measly bill of one hundred Peruvian soles each, the equivalent of about thirty dollars, to see if that will buy them some underwear or socks. I am sure that they will not receive my gift with enthusiasm or gratitude. In the old days, when television paid a fortune, I gave each of my nephews a hundred American dollar bill, a hundred pound sterling bill, and a hundred Canadian dollar bill. Now my gift has been reduced to the minuscule sum of one hundred soles or thirty dollars, but the crisis has forced me to severely cut back on those family plans, the so-called small money plans.
To my twelve nieces, all so pretty, I have given, following the wise advice of my draconian assistant, the perfumes of the Malaysian Jimmy Choo, but not the ones of one hundred milliliters, but barely the ones of fifty, a tiny bottle that was offered at an unbeatable discount price. The problem I foresee, of course, is that they, my nieces, when opening the Malay’s perfumes of dubious reputation, will have to compare them with the ones I have given to their mothers, and then they will notice, because they are not stupid, that in their Mothers I have spent twice as much, perfumes of a hundred, and on them I have saved half, awarding them with shameful baseness the miserable perfumes of fifty. My nieces will probably think then: Uncle Jaime loves me half as much as he loves my mother, because my gift costs half of what he spent on my mother. Therefore, the gift, far from leaving the recipient happy, would leave her dazed or even humiliated, a risk that I am apparently willing to take.
Finally, I have given my co-workers at the television channel Ferragamo perfumes to men and Calvin Klein to women, but I have allowed myself the moral insolence or dishonest abuse of giving them not new perfumes, but testers or testers. , which, although they were not opened, were offered in boxes or containers that did not look as good as new, regular perfumes. At the pharmacy they already know that I have a weakness for perfumes in tester boxes because they usually cost thirty percent less than the new ones. I don’t think my co-workers will feel offended because I have given them perfumes in ordinary white cardboard packaging, which are advertised as testers and in theory are not for sale. Once you open them, it’s the same content, the same aroma, the same volume. If it’s any consolation to my colleagues, let them know that at that pharmacy I only buy my perfumes in tester versions.
We have given the two maids who work with us in this house the delicious chocolates from the legendary Helena brand, except that last night, victim of a craving, I opened the two boxes and ate a chocolate from each one, and Now I hope the ladies don’t notice that a chocolate is missing from their respective box, but I felt that I also deserved a gift.
