Roses and Limousines
"Christmas won't be Christmas
without any presents," runs the heartfelt opening of Louisa Alcott's Little
Women, but presents are not always welcomed unreservedly. Dorothy Parker,
for example, regretted that she always received "one perfect rose", rather than
the "one perfect limousine" of her imagination. This cavilling runs counter to
the proverbial warning "Never look a gift horse in the mouth": words that
originally referred to examining a horse's teeth as an indication of its age,
but are now taken as a general warning against questioning the use or value of
an unexpected present.
There have of course been times when caution would have been advisable; the
Trojans would have been wise to "fear the Greeks when bearing gifts", rather
than dragging the Trojan Horse (and the Greek soldiers within it) inside the
walls of Troy. Nevertheless, presents are on the whole seen as desirable. In
Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, Humpty Dumpty points out to a
puzzled Alice that while there is only one day in the year for birthday
presents, "there are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get
un-birthday presents."
Humpty Dumpty saw himself in the light of a recipient, but Charles Lamb
neatly indicates benefit to the gift-giver. "Presents, I often say," he
observes, "endear absents."
05/12/2003
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