Money can’t buy happiness.

This past Christmas the best gifts my family gave each other were more or less meaningless crap that had no purpose whatsoever.

Case in point, I buy my dad a fairly nice watch. He pretends to like it, but honestly I don’t think he really gives a shit. He will probably appreciate it to some degree, but not a whole lot more than his $10 vending machine watch that he’s been making do with for a while now. He just doesn’t need or want a fancy watch. That’s not to say it’s wasted on him or anything, but it just didn’t stack up to gift number 2.

Gift number 2 was a Berber outfit aka. “The Osama Bin Laden Costume” from my travels to Marrakech. I got totally fleeced by a guy in the streets of the Medina and more or less got guilt-ed into paying way too much money for this giant piece of cheap cloth. I almost threw it out thinking I would never wear it again, but instead packed it across the ocean and gave it to my dad for Christmas as kind of a joke. He loved it. He dressed up in it and had a genuine laugh about the whole thing. That probably made it worth the 3 months Marrakech income I paid the guy for it.

On the same note, my sister gets me a nice purple shirt and tie set from Le Chateau. I don’t like purple and have yet to wear the shirt or the tie. I will wear it at some point, and perhaps she knows better than I do that I might look alright in it, but I will not be achieving maximum joy while in the shirt I can almost guarantee you that. However, she also got me a Christopher Walken book chronicling basically everything Walken has ever done or said. The book has his strangely askew mug plastered on a gold leaf cover. Amazing! Surely this is a present that will bring me continuous laughter and make me feel great about life and Christopher Walken for years to come. I’ll bet good money that the book was far less expensive than the shirt and tie. It also is a thoughtful gift that shows my sister knows me fairly well.

In return I got my sister a bunch of useless junk that was far too expensive for what it was, but the one standout present of the bunch was actually the cheapest — the Smorkin’ Labbit. Like a bunch of idiots we repeated the words Smorkin’ Labbit out loud for the next several days. I can’t really explain why. It’s a stupid knick-knack figurine rabbit with a cigarette in its mouth made by KidRobot. The name is a deliberately misspelled Japanese pronounciation of the words ‘smoking rabbit.’ It was so funny my sister even baked cookies that spelled out the words Smorkin’ Labbit. How mental is that?

So it’s true. Money can’t buy happiness. I think we should cap present buying at $20 or less from now on and continue to buy each other useless crap. It’s cheaper and more fun than the more expensive alternative.

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