Somewhere around mid-November this year I announced that I was just not in the holiday spirit this year. I was looking forward to Thanksgiving with family and our traditional New Year celebration with our dearest friends, but I just couldn’t summon up the energy to even think about gift giving. And, let me tell you, gift giving for me is a normally a serious pursuit! I spend time thinking about, and shopping for, the kids, friends, colleagues and, especially, my husband.

I told Tom that maybe we could skip gifts this year or maybe give each other just one thing each. The holidays and our anniversary are at the same time of year so we always combine them into one event. Maybe this was the year we simplified and just didn’t do what we usually do . . . which is overdo!

And yet . . . Thanksgiving weekend found us at an art show in North Carolina. And there I found inspiration for friends and colleagues. The flight home (and the hours of airport delays) found me online shopping for family and friends who are family. And the next thing I knew, my spare bedroom was filling with boxes and bags, wrapping paper and tags.

As I’ve wrapped and delivered and shipped, I realized that my sense of being too busy, too overwhelmed, too exhausted had really subsided, that the pleasure of finding something meaningful, something “right” for each person reinvigorated me, recharged my batteries. It was not so much about “the thing” but about the choosing, about the desire to bring pleasure to those I care about.

Tom and I exchanged our gifts, as is our custom, on a weekend day closest to our anniversary. As always, we tried to surprise, and delight, the other person. As often happens, we gave each other one gift that was the same, something each of us wanted and bought for the other. And, as always, I realized that the gifts, while welcome and appreciated and extraordinary, are really just a tangible way to express love and gratitude. They are beautiful symbols of relationship, of deeply knowing and understanding the other person, of appreciation.

Sometimes I look, as I did this year, at the holidays as just “more work,” more to do, more expectations (mostly my own) to meet. But as I sit here and reflect on the last month, on the celebrations, on the gifts and the smiles they produced, my heart is full. Is there effort in shopping and baking and sending cards and wrapping packages? Of course there is but I am grateful for the ability to make that effort and to find in it love and light.