Hataraku Maou-sama! - Volume 15 - Chapter Aft

THE AUTHOR, THE AFTERWORD, AND YOU! 
There are quite a few occasions in the year when it’s considered acceptable to give gifts to one another. After New Year’s, there’s Valentine’s Day in February, followed by White Day in March, where women in Japan give presents in return to the men who gave them Valentine’s gifts. In the spring, you have the hat trick of Mother’s Day, Children’s Day, and Father’s Day, along with the ochugen summer gift-giving tradition. No time for rest after that, though—Respect for the Aged Day comes in September, and then the year is rounded out with Christmas and the oseibo period. (Let’s not forget birthdays and anniversaries, either.) 
I doubt many people go through the effort of preparing something for every event, every year, but I’m willing to bet that most of us are on either the giving or receiving end for at least half of them. Out of them all, however, it’s still Christmas presents that I have the most trouble figuring out. 
It’s one thing if you’re a grown-up shopping for a child. It’s just a matter of considering what they’d like and buying it—a book, a toy, some kind of educational thing, or maybe an electronic gadget. But what about all the presents adults buy for each other? I have no idea what the best answer is for something like that. There’s no standard go-to, like a carnation for Mother’s Day or chocolate for Valentine’s Day or some equivalent-value sweets for White Day. For ochugen or oseibo, the standard is some kind of local produce or something the recipient and their family may find useful. Father’s Day is about thanking Dad for his hard work, and Respect for the Aged Day is about hoping your elders stay healthy for years to come; a lot of people receive trips or other presents along those lines. 

But what makes for a Christmas present if neither the givers nor the receivers are devout Christians? From what I can tell, in Japan men mostly give jewelry or handbags, while women give men useful business accessories or clothing. Is that sort of thing really well suited for the Christmas season, though? I’m not so sure of that. People might counter that by saying something with a Christmassy design is best—but of course, that’s going to be something wintry, so you can’t use it all year, and there’ll probably be some other limited-time design the very next year. At the same time, though, nobody’s asking you to go into a Christmas date with your lover and bring a tree, or a roast turkey, or some fancy cake as your main present. 
Christmas was never originally about celebrating individuals (like with birthdays) or bringing your feelings for other people across (like Valentine’s or Mother’s Day), but in modern-day Japan, it’s now taken on aspects of all those holidays, leading to this crazy sense of expectation among many recipients. Sometimes, I feel like people use Christmas to say something they missed the chance on earlier that year—fathers who were gone for business on Father’s Day, lovers who were too busy to celebrate a birthday, relatives you couldn’t reach before now. It’s your last chance to really celebrate the end of the year without all that other holiday stuff in the background. I imagine most people make up for past omissions earlier than December 25, but if you’re wondering what to get someone for Christmas, maybe think about what you couldn’t do for that person up to now. The answer could come more quickly than you’d think. 
Volume 15 of The Devil Is a Part-Timer takes Christmas, which is packed with all those different thoughts and motivations, and stuffs even more complex issues into it. 
With any gift, it’s what’s in the heart that matters first. A gift doesn’t have to be a thing or something of financial value. And one thing I especially want to note is, with everyone giving their all during Christmas, I definitely don’t want any gift-giving traditions associated with Halloween, which has grown in popularity in Japan lately. We’ve already got enough on our plates. 
With that, I hope to see you all in the next volume!