FAR MORE MEANINGFUL

Dear Spike:

A few years ago, with a honeymoon trip to Spain pending, your mother and I decided that we wouldn’t spend money on Christmas presents for one another. Instead, we agreed, we would simply make each other presents, setting a small limit on any purchased materials.

We’d really only done it to save money para museos en Madrid, hoteles en Toledo y tapas en Segovia, but the gifts we shared that Christmas were heartfelt, touching and sincere. And I think we realized that we’d done something rather special — if only accidentally.

As newlyweds, we didn’t have many holiday traditions of our own. And so we decided to start one: Each year, we make gifts for one another and donate as much as we can to a cause that had touched our lives, in some way, over the previous year.

I think it has really turned into a lovely tradition. A few years ago, we bought books for the children at a school I visited in the impoverished highlands of Ecuador. The following year, we paid rent for an Iraqi family that had been left homeless by the war. And last year we helped fund a schools project for girls in Afghanistan that was being organized by a close friend.

Meanwhile, I’ve received from your mother a handmade motorcycle tour book, a beautiful knit scarf and a lovely and fun cookbook full of recipes we enjoy making together — gifts that have been far more meaningful and important to me than anything she could have purchased at the mall.

Even before you were born, I had been contemplating what I would make you this Christmas. A few weeks after you arrived, I decided what it would be. And last month I began work on your gift.

I want it to be special, but it has been slow going. And the sight, this week, of snow on the mountains has left me feverish to move faster.

I know you won’t expect it to be perfect. And indeed, it is the imperfections of what we make by hand — what the Japanese call wabi-sabi — that makes our tradition so special to me.

Still, I want you to love it. And I’m working hard to make sure you will.

Love,
dad