Supplied by William WarbyInevitably, Christmas cheer is undercut every year with disappointing gifts and a sad sign that your friends and family don’t really ”get” you or know any of your interests. After enduring years of this, we at The Gateway asked ourselves what our dream gifts would be and who they would come from.
Lisa Szabo
When anyone asks me what I want for Christmas, I usually belt out what I feel is a pretty damn underrated rendition of Mariah Carey’s “All I want for Christmas is You.”
However, inviting every man, woman and child to “make my wish come truuuuuuuue” is really starting to wear down the exclusivity factor. So, instead of “you” this Christmas, the one thing I actually need is a new backpack.
Honestly, have you seen my backpack? It looks like I used it to break up a fight between Lindsey Lohan and her mom. My new one has to be black, to match my soul, and it also has to be big enough to fit my lunch — which is usually a regular sized tub of cottage cheese and a Tim Horton’s gift card.
This gift would be not only incredibly useful to me, but I would treasure it forever, especially if it were given by J-Law, who, like a backpack, is humble, handy and has devoted herself to bringing down the paparazzi after her nude photos were leaked on the net. Any shitty gift from Jennifer Lawrence would be a better gift than something cool from anyone else, but a black backpack of ample size from Jen would be best of all.
Nathan Fung
If I could get a Christmas gift from anyone, I’d like Holden Caulfield to give me his red hunting hat, or his “people shooting hat” as it’s known, not that he actually shoots anyone with that hat.
In a world populated by phonies that make you sick to your stomach and whom you secretly hate, I’ve just got to have a hat like that as a visual representation of my individuality, as an empowering symbol that distinguishes myself from all the other phonies.
Thing is though, if I were to just simply buy myself a hat like that, I’d never be happy with it because I’d know that it was phony; it would just be a red hunting hat and not THE people shooting hat. The only scenario where I would accept it is if Holden Caulfield were to give me his hat himself. The irony though is that once he does meet me and god forbid, start a conversation, he’d probably be repulsed and depressed by what a goddamned phony I am and would probably find a hotel room to sulk in afterwards, leaving me hatless.
Hannah Madsen
If I could have anything in the world from anyone, I would probably ask Neil Gaiman, who is one of my favourite authors, for an autographed copy of his book Neverwhere.
Neverwhere is one of my all-time favourite books, and it’s one that I seem to keep replacing because I lend it to friends and then they don’t give it back quickly enough for me to be able to read it when I get a hankering for some London Below. If I had an autographed copy, maybe I wouldn’t keep lending all of my copies out and losing them, and then I could read Neverwhere whenever I want and bask in its neat worldbuilding.
Josh Greschner
I’d want anyone but Santa delivering me presents. I imagine he’s a raging, old bastard at this point in his career, especially on Christmas Eve. He’d be running late and crash land his sleigh in front of my house, dig into his infinite sack and storm up to my door. The elves would normally do the dirty work, but Santa would just do it himself because they’d have completely screwed up Fort Mac by delivering them all the Cat Stevens vinyl meant for Portland.
Santa would come up to the door, realize it’s locked, smash the window with a rock and go inside. The Coca-Cola years would really have put him out of shape. He’d chuck presents under the tree, then turn and slip on a snowprint he left on the hardwood.
“Medic!” he’d cry. “Get in here you bastard!”
Of course, the medic would be the same decrepit, old elf that started with Santa 100 years ago, because the jolly red man overlooked importing female elves for the reproduction of labour to his North Pole colony. Or cheaped out.
“You broke your pelvis, chief,” the medic elf would say, rubbing Santa’s hips. “And hopefully your heart doesn’t give out.”
I imagine Santa then lying on the floor, reaching for the liquor cabinet in some stranger’s house because Coke just doesn’t cut it anymore.
I guess if I’d want anything for Christmas, it’d be for Santa to retire with sufficient heart pills and counseling.
