My Santa quietly reminded me what this secret santa thing is about. It was really cool 4 years ago watching reddit secret santa form and seeing all the cool, thoughtful, personal, inspiring gifts people gave each other. A couple of years and a sprawling empire of a website later, though, its all too easy to get used to it (and here I'm looking at me, yeah, you, me) and let it devolve into base consumerism: oh my user likes this, this and this, I will send a few presents from amazon, a funny note, and call it a day.

Not Apsalar, though. She remembers. She stalked me, she observed me closely, and somehow she sent presents that are perfect for me, will be enjoyed immensely and yet are also personal to her too.

I knew I was outclassed when I opened the box and it was padded with red paper, each item individually wrapped, tied with string, and attached is a beautiful hand-written note on card-stock paper.

The note reads:

"Dear Madducks,

I hope these gifts are not too different from your interests. [ed: HA] Lacking experience in the genres and writers you listed, I took the easy way out and gave you gifts meaningfulto myself instead.

One was written by my creative writing professor, who helped instill in me an undying appreciation (if not ability) for poetry.

Another was given to me by my grandfather and contains many shared moments of awe and appreciation of the word.

The third is my favorite folk-tale, more for the illustrations perhaps, but I love it all the same.

Finally, my husband helped collect a few Rogue-like (or Rogue-like-like) games for your enjoyment. Of these all I've played is Dwarf Fortress, but I can attest to its excellent-ness.

It was a pleasure internet-stalking you and I am proud to have gotten such an interesting and thoughtful person as my giftee. Merry Christmas!"

You know you've done well when your giftee is thrilled and hasn't even opened anything yet. It only gets better.

The aforementioned fairy tale was Vasilisa the Beautiful and Baba Yaga. I don't know if you've read any fairy tales with Baba Yaga, but she is this super creepy witch in Russian folk-lore, her house is made of human bones and hair, and she rides around in a mortar and pestle because she's awesome like that. Our Vasilisa is forced to live with her with three days and survives thanks to a gift from her late mother. She comes back, having plumbed the dark depths of her psyche and mastered them, kicks the ass of her wicked step-mother and step-sisters, then moves into a palace with a Tsar because she spins a mean fabric and she's boss like that. The illustrations are reproductions of those of Ivan Yakovlevich Bilibin, and they. are. beautiful.

This gift alone would have been enough to thrill me, but Apsalar is not done, oh no. She gave me "Troubled Tongues" a book of poems by Crystal Williams, who apparently actually was my Santa's poetry teacher! A word here: I am absolutely fanatical about poetry. I read it every day, I live the stuff. So this is amazing both because it is so spot on, and because it is so damn personal to my Santa.

With that in mind, "A Book of Luminous Things", an anthology edited by no less than the legendary ﻿Czeslaw Milosz was included, which personal value you know from the above letter. I'm going to enjoy the fuck out of this book.

Finally, that usb drive? Wonderful, careful selection of rogue-likes, and I'm glad to say it did not weld itself to my hand when I picked it up. In fact, I dare-say its a blessed rust-proof +8 USB of roguelikes. I don't know who Apsalar's husband is, but goddamn it, he's as awesome as his wife.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. I'm not being hyperbolic here, I really am this excited about these presents.

Please, if you're reading this, upvote my santa if you see her on reddit. She deserves it, trust me.