Possessed by possessions?

We shared the house with a baby, a toddler, and a local teacher who’d been assigned to the area but had no place to stay. Amazingly, we did not die of deprivation, we were not dirty, and we slept like babies every night.

I would not wish to live out my life at that simple a level, but there's certainly something to be said for weaning ourselves away from the present consumer society where people shop as recreation for things they don't need and can't afford, or to give to other people who don’t want them.

I learned another lesson about possessions from an old man who did garden work in our neighbourhood. He was always barefoot and I offered to get him some shoes.

He explained patiently that he could not afford to accept a gift of shoes. "If I have shoes I must buy socks. Then I must wash the socks and will need to buy more soap. Then one day the shoes will fall apart and I will not have money to buy new ones. My feet will be soft from many months of wearing socks and shoes. It will cause pain for weeks while my feet become tough again. So thank you very much, missus, but I do not want any shoes."

For the past few years we have been trying to be more responsible in gift matters, and give practical things and not too many of them. This Christmas, everybody got some books; that’s a constant in our family: whatever the occasion, you get books.

But as far as "the big present", one granddaughter got new riding boots to further her career in equine studies, and another got the promise of a contribution to her trip on the training sail ship Leeuwin next year. One daughter is returning to higher education after a gap for child-rearing, so she got cash for school books. The other daughter sews, so this year we contributed to an upgraded machine for her.

She usually gives her siblings and parents things like World Vision certificates. I like the idea that somewhere in Palestine there’s a lemon tree giving fruit in my name, or that deep in Somalia there are a pair of ducks providing saleable eggs to a nascent poultry entrepreneur.

My maternal grandmother used to say “Enough is as good as plenty”. I didn’t understand what that meant when I was 10, but it makes a lot of sense now.