That old Christmas chestnut of children's gifts.

Christmas is upon us and it’s time for advertorials thinly disguised as social commentary, like a recent offering from The Guardian: “Are you a Pank - Professional, Aunt, No Kids?” Essentially, your Christmas purpose is to keep the economy thriving by indulging your siblings’ offspring with stuff. Whether my sister is spending US$387 per annum on each of our children largely depends on how often they sting her for a trip to the cafe, but while this figure seems outrageous, it isn’t terribly difficult to drop $400 on a child in a given calendar year. If it was difficult, I wouldn’t have my childlike adoration of Christmas shattered by the annual realisation of how damnably expensive it all is, and I wouldn’t be so bewildered by how my kids have so much stuff.

Now our families and friends are mostly restrained when it comes to birthdays and Christmas, and we’re most certainly of the “mean parent” variety, so our two cherubs have noticeably fewer toys than many of their peers. I applaud you, sensible family members and dear friends of ours. That all said, the children have still received more toys in their short lives than I did in my entire eighteen years of official childhood.

And kids these days get a lot of collective grief about all their possessions, like somehow they’re to blame. Oooh, look at those ungrateful brats with their 76 teddy bears; they just don’t know the value of things.

Well, guess what? Chances are the four-year-old didn’t buy those teddy bears, and my money is on the parents absolutely loathing them, but out of a sense of obligation to be a grateful receiver of well-meaning gifts, can’t just throw them all away come January 6th.

So in its deliberate attempt to sell stuff, the article on PANKS (far better than Wealthy Aunt, No Kids, I suppose) first fails to address the fact that adults without children shouldn’t feel any compulsion to buy things for other people’s kids, but secondly, it ignores the very real problem faced by parents with insufficient toy storage capacity or indeed a desire to have all that stuff in their houses: Toys cost far less now than they did 30 years ago, and there are significantly more adults with disposable income buying presents for fewer children than perhaps ever before. Consequently, middle-class western children have significantly more stuff than they need.

You only need to consider the some rough unverified economics. When I was a kid, soft toys were fiendishly expensive. I can’t recall exactly what my Care Bear Cousin or Cabbage Patch Kid cost - because I didn’t purchase them - but I'm pretty sure the Cabbage Patch Kid was well over NZ$50 and may have been bordering on $75. I didn’t concern myself at the time with how Santa afforded it, but I did know that I could only get the Care Bear as a very special, really extraordinary treat. Care Bears were imported and expensive, and would have been more in dollar value than their equivalents today - you can easily pick one up for NZ$30. When you consider inflation since the late 1980s, this put our childhood toys into a category of almost luxury goods.

But while the price of milk has steadily risen, the price of toys has dropped substantially, and they are available in consumer locations and quantities that would have seemed laughably excessive in the laughably excessive 1980s. Consequently, without any effort, you can spend very little on a child’s birthday present and still have it take up considerable cupboard/floor space in a child’s bedroom.

And parents are really at a loss as to how to deal with all this stuff. You can give blanket bans on presents, but such requests are typically ignored or actively resented. Furthermore, most of the gifts are not in themselves excessive, it’s just the cumulative effect.

Let’s go back to the people buying the presents. Aunts, Uncles, Grandparents, and family friends without children. There have always been people who have some claim on a child and have always had the tendency to buy slightly lavish gifts. And that’s cool. You’re meant to get awesome presents from your “rich” Uncle overseas.

But there’s just an awful lot of them now. When I was a child, most of my parents’ friends had children, and certainly weren’t making a habit of buying presents for me. My parents’ friends without children tended not to have the income to throw gifts around, but they also had nieces and nephews of their own who got first dibs on their largesse. My uncles and aunts with one exception had children, and I was lucky to get some socks or a funny knickknack on Christmas Day. Or the greatest Xmas prize - the family sampler biscuit box.

My kids, however, are the only grandchildren on both sides, so counting grandparents and uncle and aunts, right off the bat they have 7 adults with disposable incomes who have no other immediately related children to buy for; 9 if you count my sisters-in-law; 11 if you count me and my husband. But really, we don’t count, because we’re parents and have no disposable income!

Furthermore, many of my friend who aren't parents don’t even have nieces and nephews, and some of my parents’ friends don’t have grandchildren. Now if you want to know a group of solvent individuals who really want to buy presents for children, it’s retirees without grandchildren. Their numbers are growing, but they still feel deprived and will acquire quasi-grandkids whether anyone involved likes it or not!

So as much as easy consumerism needs a good talking to, I don’t want to lay any blame today in this social commentary, but offer a solution for all people, parents or sane adults alike, when it comes to children’s presents; a couple of simple question to ask yourself before you drop $24.99 on a glitter and bead craft that looks kind of fun, but which you probably wouldn’t want in your house.

What is my relationship to this child?

Did the equivalent person in my life ever buy presents for me?

If the answer is no, then probably no one will notice if you don’t give a present.

And if you still feel you ought to buy a present or just really want to, step away from the stuffed animals and buy a book. Or some $4.99 felt-tip pens.

You can never go wrong with a book, and kids always love pens. 

P.S. And if you really do have $387 to spend on a child each year, perhaps offer to help out with the fees for ballet lessons or similar. Chances are the parents will fall at your feet in eternal praise.

The tragic ballad of the singing mother

The New Zealand Youth Choir and Toronto Children's Chorus rehearsing together in Toronto (27 November 2013)

The New Zealand Youth Choir was in town last week on their whistle stop tour through the USA and Canada. Naturally I spent the day with them in Toronto, hanging out with my big sister (vocal consultant to the choir), catching up with old friends on staff, and seeing singers who were small children when I sang in the choir - kids I used to babysit and even conduct in a children’s choir - all grown up and singing in my choir. Once you’ve been a part of the musical brilliance that is the NZYC, it will always be your choir, and that day in Toronto was something of a homecoming.

Unfortunately, I was also coming down with something, so over the course of the day I lost my voice and couldn’t even join in with the post-concert pub sing-along. (Unless you count my attempts at singing the tenor parts, which we won’t). This really was a shame, because I’m not doing much singing at the moment, and haven’t even joined a choir since we moved to Toronto.

Let me rephrase that. I auditioned for a fantastic choir over the summer, but thanks to moving halfway around the world, getting pneumonia, and generally being out of practice, my singing was appalling and I didn’t get in. Furthermore, I can’t quite bring myself to devote the time required to just join a community choir to get my voice back in action. Because Youth Choir and all the chamber and cathedral choirs I have sung with in New Zealand and Scotland have spoilt me for amateur choral singing. To use a sports analogy, I almost made the pro-leagues and it’s just hard to reconcile myself to the Saturday social clubs.

Many singers face this at various points in their careers: some do heaps of performing to a high level at school and then never sing after the age of 18; some people I know from my Youth Choir days no longer sing either. They made it into one of the world’s very best youth choirs and after the age of 25 ne’er a note breaks forth from their larynx; some singers then find it very hard to combine a professional life outside of music with the demands of rehearsal schedules (predominantly unpaid), concert demands (again, unpaid for most choral singers), and the general obligations of adult life.

In many ways I fall into that last category. I made a decision back in 2001 to not take my place in the MMus programme at the University of Auckland, and take a gamble on postgrad English Literature courses overseas. Had I continued on the path of musical scholarship, I probably would have a career today in music. Musicologist, music teacher, arts administrator, who knows? Whatever I had become, it is likely that choral singing would have been an easy and natural facet of my professional music life. Or at least easier to combine.

My time studying English at the University of Edinburgh also involved lots of singing, and it was looking for a while like I had nailed this English scholar by day, choral singer by evening and weekend life. But then something put a spanner in those works. I had a child.

Again, I could do this. Sure the hormones of pregnancy and breastfeeding can mess with your voice, but you’ve just got to keep singing. Between a non-singing husband and a very musically supportive family, I kept up as much cathedral singing as possible, and even got into the 32-voice pool for Voices NZ, the country’s semi-professional chamber choir. There I was with a baby daughter, doing some part-time teaching at Auckland University, and still managing to get to rehearsals, services, and the occasional big concert. Yay me.

But my research was slipping. My research. The thing you need if you ever want a real job at a university.

Then I had another child who would not sleep and something had to give. And that something was singing. Actually, that first year with my son, I managed to present one paper at a conference. No teaching. No sleeping for that matter, and maybe one Christmas service just to feel like a human again. I think. I don’t remember much from that year.

People would say, “but at least your husband isn’t singing, so he can watch the kids.” Well, that’s true to a point, but non-singing husbands also have jobs and other commitments too. We also like to see each other occasionally.

However, I was still in New Zealand and an accepted member of the singing establishment. I may have been a bit out of practice, but the conductors knew me, knew my voice at its best, and knew they could rely on my musicianship. I could still sing without the pesky issue of auditions.

Things are a bit different here in Canada. I’m still fortunate enough to know a couple of big players in the Toronto choral scene, but that doesn’t make up for a voice that’s out of practice and some breath control ruined by pneumonia. I may look good on paper, but right now the goods don’t live up to the CV.

And I’m not alone. For my singing peers who are also mothers, it just seems to be extraordinarily difficult to maintain family life, a work life, and a singing life. Priorities change yes, but with all the best will in the world, it’s often finances that rule the day. If I’m not being paid for choir, and I have to figure out babysitting, it is just prohibitively expensive to manage a rehearsal week leading up to a big performance, let alone deal with a tour.

You can forget about singing lessons too, especially if you’re a young family on one income. At the standard rate of $60 or more per lesson, and then factoring in potential babysitting costs, it falls into the financially too-hard basket.

Another depressing point is that it’s not the same for the Dads. Sure they have very similar commitments to juggle, but the choirs bend over backwards to keep them singing. Because you can always find another soprano or alto, but basses and particularly tenors are in short supply.

I don’t have any solutions to offer, but I just want it on the record why so many of us struggle to keep singing once we’re grown-ups who can no longer rely on school and university holidays, or flexible timetables. Once we’ve got children who need to be ferried around to their own activities, rehearsals and concerts. And those activities cost. They cost so much.

I’m very glad I didn’t stay in Auckland to do my MMus. Going to Edinburgh and eventually getting my PhD was unquestionably the best thing I could have done, but most choices in life have an alternative option that could have been just as fulfilling in a different way.

So when I left the pub the other night, as the strains of cheesy operatic and choral numbers sung by drunk tenors and basses rang out through the clamour of the Toronto night, it was an extraordinarily bittersweet leaving of a world that had so very nearly been in my grasp.

Hopefully time, circumstances and practice will allow me to once again be more than a passing visitor.

P.S. I think things would be different if I was still in the UK. The advantage of a large population in a relatively small place means there are many more choirs to sing with. There is also a strong tradition of cathedral singing, so even if you can’t commit fully to a choir’s schedule, you can always be a regular deputy, and even make a bit of money on the side in the process. Ah, depping. I love depping. Limited rehearsals. Jolly good Sunday morning sing!