Merry Christmas. Here's your rock.
By Andrew Smith

Christmas shopping always makes me think of my ancestors, the cavemen. And I don't just mean Uncle Fred when he was drinking, either. I mean real cavemen; big hairy guys that walked around with spears and poked mammoths with them for fun and profit.

I usually start thinking about these mammoth-puncturing relatives of mine when I'm walking around the mall, frantically searching the sweater piles for that special gift for cousin Carrie, who's oh-so-hard to shop for. Somehow, in my mind at least, cavemen and shopping malls are inextricably linked. And every Christmas I find myself walking around the mall, thinking about cavemen. And sometimes cavewomen, and sometimes even little cave girls and boys.

There's lots of reasons to think about cavemen. First of all it takes my mind off the troubling fact that I really don't have a clue what to get cousin Carrie. Secondly, we still are cavemen. We don't live in caves anymore, but other than that we haven't changed very much. We still act like cavemen most of the time.

Ask my wife.

Take scavenging the sweater piles for cousin Carrie. In caveman terms this is exactly the same as scavenging the seashore at low tide, looking for half a dead seal to drag home to my mates sister, Reaog. "Here, Reaog. Merry Christmas. Too bad vultures ate the other half." I'd like to see the expression on Carrie's face the day I bring her half a dead seal. I'd have it gift wrapped, of course.

Christmas shopping must've been easy in caveman days. "Here Brother Glog, I got you a rock. Merry Christmas. And you, Snorp, you I got a rock. Merry Christmas. And Gleb, dear friend, for you a rock. Merry Christmas. And Bleg, I didn't forget you either. I got you a rock. It's an old one. An antique. Merry Christmas."

I only wish that Christmas shopping was as easy today. You know it could be. Really, a gift is all in the spirit behind it. A rock from a little child, in all the sincerity of their heart, is really a priceless gift. What more could you want? Another pair of checkered socks?

Something else that makes me think about cavemen is that the shopping mall has sort of become the epitome of western civilization. These climate controlled caverns, filled with every kind of gew-gaw you can imagine, and plenty that you can't, seem to me to be at the pinnacle of 50,000 years of human striving and struggling.

Life wasn't easy for cavemen and their families. If they wanted to eat dinner, first they had to catch it, then they had to kill it. And like as not, it wanted dinner too, and the whole time they were trying to catch and kill it, it was trying to catch and kill them. Probably lots of cavemen went out to get dinner, and ended up being one instead.

And so for thousands of years our ancestors fought tooth and nail to guarantee that there would be a future, that someday we could go to shopping malls, and buy stuff. And bit by bit, little by little, they began to figure things out, and to pass that knowledge on, and to build on it with each succeeding generation. And here we are today, the richest nation in the history of the Earth, and at last we have got shopping malls, and Christmas, the perfect excuse to go to them.

So I wonder, is this what humanity has worked so hard to achieve? Is this the brightest flower of our civilization? Is this the ultimate expression of humanity? Man; the creature who shops?

Hey, I'm not knocking it. If that's what we are, that's what we are. Well, Ok, I am knocking it, but I can't help it. I'm just contrary, and too much holiday cheer puts me in a bad mood. Certainly we are blessed to live in a time and place of such material abundance that we can even dare to be scornful of it. Oh rejoice!

Still, did we miss something here?

That's the kind of stuff I think about as I wander around the mall, scavenging the sweater piles, looking for a bargain. As you can imagine, this makes Christmas shopping somewhat harder than it has to be, because not only do I have to ask myself if the style and color are right, but I've also got to consider the complete history of western civilization with each purchase. Which is why I, personally, wish we would go back to just giving rocks for Christmas

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Anyway, if you see a guy with a noticeable browridge and big hairy eyebrows shuffling around at the mall this shopping season, don't be alarmed; it's just me. I'm a post-modern (what the Hell does post-modern mean, anyway?) caveman, out hunting for his mate and cubs. But I can't seem to find what I really want. I scavenge the tides of glittering merchandise looking for something solid, something with substance, something like a rock.

You know what I mean?

And Merry Christmas. Really.