Twenty-five.

All I want for Christmas is you.

I remember loving fourth quarter, the end of every year, but I only ever started referring to it as such after having spent a couple of years working in the world of corporate business. Q4, on the heels of a cooldown from summer, is a time that's typically rife with excitement. Between the monthly holidays in October, November, and December, time practically flies by, and the year is over before I even know it—January approaches with great immediacy.

I didn't grow up observing these holidays. (I meant to make a distinction here about the holidays being American, but we also didn't commemorate Chinese ones, either.) My biological parents, both immigrants, also didn't have them in their childhoods and weren't raised as Christians, so it's logical that they would impart unto me neither fastidiousness nor affinity for Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc. My childhood had no traditions of turkey dinners or presents under a tree, but sometimes—and especially after their divorce—my father would take us to Jack in the Box for a "celebratory" meal.

With a mostly American upbringing, I obviously picked up on the significance of these holidays. Strangers dressed in costumes knocked on our door for Halloween; people hosted visiting relatives annually for Thanksgiving; my schoolmates showed off to each other the gifts they'd received for Christmas. Since these holidays weren't big in my household (I'd surmise that we even recognized them maybe half the time), I had a fascination with these distinctly American festivities. It wasn't that I envied everyone else or was jealous of them—I just wanted to know what it was like so that I could, ultimately, decide how I felt. Participation was performative, I knew, but I wanted to be in on the joke.

During the first decade of my life, I seldom was given presents of my own, and any that did come my way were efficiently re-gifted by my mother to other acquaintances. My own dismay aside, I watched those interactions play out, learning that kindness could be transactional: whether anticipated or not, gift-giving made people happy and positively increased affinities. That, too, was an exercise of power, and I felt extremely powerless, sans agency, unable to give as a(n incomeless) child. Above all, I had the impression that receiving a gift meant the giver cared about you. I wanted to know what that felt like.

When I was a kid—10, 11, 12, 13—the thing I wanted most in the world was a best friend. I wanted to be important to people; to have people that understood me. I wanted to just be close to somebody. And back then, a thought would go through my head almost constantly: "There's never gonna be a room someplace where there's a group of people sitting around, having fun, hanging out, where one of them goes, 'You know what would be great? We should call Fiona. Yeah, that would be good.' That'll never happen. There's nothing interesting about me." I just felt like I was a sad little boring thing.

Fiona Apple, one of my favorite musicians, best summarized those emotions. I wanted to be important to someone. I wanted someone to see something at the mall and think of me. I wanted to be surprised.

In seventh or eighth (or even ninth) grade, in a Californian December, I made a mistake. I went to the mall and purchased gifts for twenty-something classmates, apparel or plush toys that I personally selected for the people that I assumed were my friends. I showed up at school the next day, laden with gift bags, and passed out my parcels one by one. Most of them were gracious recipients, and that was fine, but in the reactions of some I realized that I had misinterpreted the closeness of our friendships. That was the day I learned the hard way that friendships, too, were subject to a hierarchy. Few reverted to me with a gift of my own, but I don't know what I expected. I just had my hopes up, I guess.

As an adult, my closest friends and I have a mutual understanding. We give if we can, and if we can't it's not a big deal. I'm assured in my knowledge that they love me. Sometimes, we ask each other what we want, and we find ways to surprise each other with that which should otherwise be unsurprising—after all, we know exactly what's coming. This applies to the men in my life, too: to do away with awkwardness, especially if we've only just begun to date, it's simply easiest to be straightforward until we've developed the requisite rapport to know what the other likes.

Nowadays, I'm pretty honest about what I want from others. This year, it's a $7 scent sampler from Le Labo because I don't know if I even like the scent. Before, it was the limited deluxe "Guest List Edition" of Kylie Minogue's Disco, and prior to that it was Japanese Breakfast's Jubilee. Giving my friends a tangible yet inexpensive item to cross off their metaphorical Christmas shopping lists is a two-fold exercise: they can give me something I'll enjoy, and I'll actually enjoy it. Equally, I want to know exactly what it is that I can hunt down for them, and it's reassuring that I'm usually giving them something they'll realistically use. Or, we'll mutually agree to give each other nothing but instead go out to share a meal together, and that's just as fortifying.

I still don't have a habit of spending the holidays with my blood relatives, although they're now of the age—and so am I—where sentimentality has begun to creep in. Yet, the people I like to be around are the people that like to be around me, and so my chosen family has taken priority. I harbor some complex emotions about filial piety and doing what's right, but those thoughts are scheduled to surface another time.