A Gift Covered Desk

My sister currently works at Target corporate headquarters in their legal

and marketing departments. She's always been the more business savvy of the three Precht kids, and I'm really proud to see how well she's doing; proposals for new products have been written and considered, and whatnot. The most interesting part of her job is how flexible with people she has become.

When we were growing up neither of us liked the Christmas bombardment. As

Bahá’ís we had no real attachments to the holiday, and were, generally, around family on a regular basis which wouldn't warrant a grandiose trek to visit someone in some far off local. We would go to the movies; like so many Jews, Muslims, Hindus and the like; with our parents and spend the day as if it were any other. But before Christmas day, Tajalli and I would talk about how generally annoy it was to have people constantly, and bombastically proclaim "Have a Merry Christmas!" as we walked in or out of stores, shops, the library or anywhere else for that matter. "Do they know they that we're Christians? Because we're not." she would gripe walking to my or her car, stomping the slush beneath her feet with more authority than usual. "Probably not, but whatever."

Over the last few years, I would attempt to pacify her disdain of the

misguided, perhaps in her mind, greetings of workers and bell ringers, but now that she's married and living in a completely different state than I am I've realized that she is far more at peace with the comments. “I actually got a good gift from my secret santa today...skittles and a photo album,” she relayed to me in an IM window earlier this morning. “You're [sic] a dork / I bet you were more excited about the skittles than the photo album.” She seemed fine receiving such gifts from a person who did or didn’t know she was a Bahá’í. Actually, she seemed elated, continuing to tell me that yesterday she got “a santa claus ornament and snickers (mmmm...snickers).” She even got her “secret santa” “a nice candle and stand, milk duds, a snowman salt and pepper shaker (she is 60), and a pad of snowflake paper.”

I can see her at her computer, typing quietly to avoid detection, looking at

the gifts sitting on her desk without a shred of annoyance, thinking about what to get her “secret santa” recipient tomorrow; avoiding slush, walking into a store to buy a gift, and greeting the person at the door with her husband.