William Marvel: Guilt-a-thon

Our poor rural mailman was just beginning to see some relief from the long deluge of political propaganda when the Christmas begging season began. On days when he might otherwise get a break from stopping at our mailbox, he still has to pull over and drop off appeals for money mailed at cheap bulk rates by nonprofits whose directors draw salaries far higher than anything I ever made.

Christmas is the season of guilt-giving. Sometimes the guilt emerges from within, as an indirect, unintended consequence of the act of giving. My parents so stinted themselves in the Fifties to put presents under the tree for me that the ephemeral pleasures of opening them fermented over the decades into regret-tinged recollections. Whenever the garden fork unearths one of my lost, long-forgotten toys — like the plastic powder horn from my Davy Crockett set, which turned up this summer — I wonder how much it cost, and how long my father or mother had to work to pay for it.