I grew up with pretty left wing parents who were against consumerism. I liked the gifts and the principal of a fun pagan silly ritual where be re-express our lo

I grew up with pretty left wing parents who were against consumerism. I liked the gifts and the principal of a fun pagan silly ritual where be re-express our love for one another. I never felt displeasure with being given a gift in my life. Guilt, maybe, that I couldn't show more pleasure in the situation, but kids are pretty good at hiding their emotions. Sometimes the act drops, and then observers just say you're having a bad day. I find the idea that depressed people have a gift at seeing through fakery as troubling. It is a correlation and causation thing. If I was depressed everything seemed shit, even the stuff that wasn't fake, so of course it might look enlightened in certain situations. I think a lot of those studies are flawed pop-psychology type stuff that I wouldn't put much value in.