What a paradoxical culture we have. We pride ourselves on a consumer engine where you can buy almost anything you need or want. And yet we go through this ritual every year where we try to buy each other stuff when we could just go out and get it for ourselves.
Strange, isn't it?
There are still a few items that you can't pick up at Wal-Mart, though. They're rare and wonderful and infinitely more special than the latest machine with i in front of it.
The first of these treasures came to me earlier this month and was unrelated to Christmas. Many of my northern relatives are accomplished deer-slayers and love to share their bounty every fall. This year it was venison summer sausage, shot by an uncle and packaged by a professional butcher (though "meat-artist" might be a more appropriate title for the man who created this). Pardon the expression, but it blew away the store-bought stuff.
The second treasure was not quite as exotic but was tasty nonetheless: homemade date bread. I loved it so much that I was sent home with a loaf.
I suppose there is some kind of deep truth here, a connection between me, the deer, and the people who fixed the food for me, a beautiful universal axiom about life and death and love, but I'll leave it unwritten because the deepest truths are beyond the reach of words, like trying to describe the taste of homemade date bread.
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