Seasons of giving in slice of life

Here’s something that occurred to me the other day when I was stumbling as usual through the fiction-writing process: speculative slice of life anime and manga, even those with some emphasis on festivals, rarely include an event analogous to Christmas as manifest in the United States. This is not to say that gifts aren’t given and received in fantastical and science-fictional slice of life franchises — they are, and pretty commonly — but few such franchises seem to present a holiday whose focus or impetus is the giving and receiving of gifts.

Consider Aria. Food is a popular gift in Neo-Venezia and a significant element of at least a few of the celebrations we see. Old friends gather and catch up around the table; characters separated by physical distance send one another food, or include food in their rare instances of personal interaction (Grandma being the prime example of this). Hell, in the fifth episode of Aria the Natural, food serves a supernatural purpose. But there isn’t exactly a designated Potluck Dinner Day each year, a day when everyone is expected to give and receive. The giving of food is more incidental, more spontaneous, more pointed — and perhaps more meaningful. In the first half of Aria the Natural 19, for example, Akari and Alice bring Aika pudding not because they’re obligated to, but because they know Aika well enough to know it’ll make her feel better (and in Aqua, at least — I can’t remember if it’s true of the show — it’s a doubly good call on Akari and Alice’s part, as Aika wanted pudding anyway, but failed to secure it previously).

We do see the Neo-Venezian Festa del Bòcolo, when women receive roses from their admirers — but, insofar as the nature of the gift is determined by the tradition of the celebration, it’s more akin to Valentine’s Day (or White Day, as it were).

Haibane Renmei has that festival with the colored nuts — I don’t recall any other festival in Haibane Renmei, but it’s been quite a while since I saw it, so I could be wrong. Again, custom determines the nature of the gift, even if it allows for some degree of personalization. Though the nut festival certainly lends something to the show’s ending, other instances of giving — instances not tied to a particular celebration — stand out more clearly in my memory — the wing-warmer things, for example, or the wing ointment (Rakka’s wings get a lot of attention, come to think of it). Wasn’t there an umbrella in there somewhere, too? And some pea soup?

Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou more or less eschews the festival thing entirely. Well, that’s not true; there are little local celebrations, but they’re more spontaneous and less organized than the festival days of Neo-Venezia and Glie. Certainly none of them revolve around buying and giving; material things have a particular significance in YKK insofar as they’re often hard to come by, and, though the setting does seem to include money, to some extent, bartering seems a viable alternative. Things given have tangible and metaphoric weight. Alpha hands out quite a bit of coffee over the course of the manga, but we know just what she has to go through to secure coffee beans and fresh water, a process perhaps reflective of her interpersonal efforts. And when she decides to take a lengthy journey, Alpha leaves her scooter — her means of exploring her place, her home, even her means of transmuting “place” into “home” — to Takahiro, who is quickly growing old enough to inherit place/home from his forebears. Each act of giving — save perhaps the act of giving alcohol to Alpha for the lulz — exists independent of mandatory, customary celebration days, and stands on its own as a uniquely weighty event.

It seems, then, that I’m working toward the idea that a Christmas-like celebration would cheapen the giving in the aforementioned stories, but that’s not really what I mean to say — that is, I didn’t mean to say it when I started this little post. At any rate, if you can think of any counter-examples, examples of speculative slice of life franchises with holidays resembling Christmas in the United States (or any other country where it’s somewhat commercial, for that matter), I’d certainly like to know. Mine are shaping up to be a bit one-sided.