treats, trinkets, and treasures.
give them a cookie, my god, but please not another mini rubik’s cube!
A recent email sent by one of my children’s teachers asked that all students in the classroom bring a long sock—not to be confused with a Christmas stocking—into school. The long socks, the email explained, will hang in the classroom as a message of unity and love for each other. I’ve never considered a sock to be a particular conveyer of unity and love, but they are cozy, and love and unity are certainly things I can rally behind. The second request in the letter however, made my hair stand on end. I felt my eye begin to twitch when I read it. My fists may have clenched, my teeth definitely did. Each child was also asked to contribute a small treat or mini toy for each one of their classmates. The email reminded parents that there are twenty-three students in the classroom this year, so we should be prepared to send in twenty-three of our chosen treats or trinkets. The children, the email continues, will place these items into each other’s stockings—forgive me, long socks—and bring their own filled sock home again before the holiday break.
Twenty-three trinkets sent home three days before Christmas, or ever, is my personal nightmare, so very merry Christmas to me, but the whole situation got me thinking more generally about treats and trinkets and treasures for kids. What are they? Why do we give them? Is there any hope for influencing alternatives to the standard fare?
The list of suggested items in the long sock missive included the usual suspects: mini erasers, fun pencils, key chains, friendship bracelets, mini plastic animals, assorted rings, bookmarks, mini rubik's cubes, fidgets, gel pens, and mini puzzles. (An accompanying holiday sock flyer sent home in homework folders expressly forbade contributions of food, but the email listed lollipops and rice krispie treats and nut-free candy, so I’m choosing to pretend I didn’t see the flyer.)
At the risk of repeating myself, we are drowning in fun pencils. I have thrown away more broken mini rubik’s cubes than I can count. Erasers celebrating every holiday, season, and jungle animal under the sun? We’ve got ‘em! When I suggested that maybe kids should regift the random assortment of trinkets they all already have stashed into their backpack pockets and under their beds, my child balked. (There may or may not have been tears.) When I suggested we try to make something simple, they insisted that we would go through considerable effort to make something that would simply get thrown away. Their words, not mine: “No one will TREASURE it.”
They’re probably right. When twenty-three small trinkets are sent home it’s hard to believe that any of them will be kept, let alone treasured, for very long. A lollipop, my kid rightfully reasoned, would at least be momentarily enjoyed. Twenty-three lollipops, or mini candy canes, or pieces of gelt coming home days before winter break might still be overkill, but also, who cares? They’ll get eaten and enjoyed or otherwise passed along? (James brightly suggested we send in twenty-three clementines and was swiftly excoriated.)
In considering what my own child might contribute to the long socks, I was struck by both my grumpiness and my engrossment. Why did I care so much? Devoting any energy at all to a string of socks hanging in an elementary school classroom is surely not the best use of my limited reserves, but I am fascinated by the obsession with and practice of trinket giving to young kids. There’s the sheer volume and the normalization of wastefulness to consider, but also, and maybe more meaningfully, there’s the continuous reinforcement of the idea that we show our love, our appreciation, and our friendship through stuff.
In the case of most kid trinkets, it’s not just any stuff, but stuff that has very little value. In part that’s because there’s simply so much of it. Trinkets aren’t offered to our kids occasionally, or as an exception, they’ve become attendant to nearly every celebration from birthdays to holidays to the end of a routine dentist appointment. Your teeth are clean! Hooray! Please pick three plastic fidgets from this basket. When we’re giving children small gifts so frequently, it’s no wonder we fall back on the easiest, least expensive options. Adding a bag of plastic doodads to an online shopping cart is easier and less expensive than offering just about any alternative. A pack of 32 gel pens costs $7.99 on the site that shall not be named. 24 godforsaken mochi squishies costs $9.99 and come in a jaunty bucket. 100 holiday-themed erasers? $4.95.
What alternatives would I suggest?