This is a time of year when people give gifts to one another. Everybody is supposed to get a gift; nobody should be left out. That’s why we need to get something for Johnny’s daughter, whose name, by the way, is “Anna.” not “What‘s-Her-Name.” It doesn’t matter that she is 17 now and not the 11 year old she was when we last met: She has to have a gift.

It is good thing that everyone will receive something when we gather for the annual Christmas gift distribution. Nevertheless, important things can easily be forgotten in this cultural mania for covering all the bases at Christmas time. Specifically, it is easy to forget the message that should be behind gift giving. That message is “I see you. I care about you. I want you to know that your happiness and your welfare matter to me. I hope that my gift pleases you and that, in giving it to you, you will know that you are important to me.”

Gift giving should be an expression of love. This special holiday season of Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and the Hindu Festival of Lights is a time for expressing love and caring.

Now to be realistic, we can’t love everyone to the same degree — at least not the sort of love that is an expression of genuine, personal valuing. We can’t love Johnny’s daughter, Anna, whom we scarcely remember, in the same way that we, say, love our partner. But wait a minute. Perhaps we can also love Anna personally if we sit next to her at Christmas dinner, if we go out of our way to talk with her — if we give her the gift of our attention and our warmth.

Here is a way to use the notion of gift giving to deepen love between yourself and your partner. Train yourself to see that anything anyone does to benefit you, at any time of year, is that person’s gift to you, and therefore worthy of your notice and appreciation. I mean that your husband’s preparing supper when it isn’t his turn to cook but he knows that you don’t feel well is a gift to you. Go further — see as a gift even what your partner does that is “his job” or “her job,” and regularly give thanks for that, too.

Similarly, whatever you do that benefits your partner is your gift to him or her — as long as you have your partner‘s welfare in mind and tell yourself at the time, “This is my gift to you.”

Why not keep it simple, you ask? Why not just figure that your partner does his or her job and you do yours, and leave love out of it? No problem, if your relationship is basically a utilitarian one or if you two are both going along to get along with each other. On the other hand, if you want a relationship of love with your partner, then the more you name the helpful actions of either of you as  love, the more love you bring into your relationship.

I am talking here about ordinary actions, as well as extraordinary ones. You are training yourself to recognize the ordinary kindnesses, considerations and friendly gestures of relationship as expressions of love. By doing so, over time you may discover that you two are living together with love. And what a Christmas present, a birthday present, an any-day present that would be — to take love into your relationship in simple ways and then to realize one day that love really lives between you!

If you were intent on improving your ability to love, and you asked me for one essential tip — just one. Here is what I would tell you: Stay open to your partner. Nothing is more important.

Staying open means —

• Open to the other person’s point of view
• Open to his or her urgency, vulnerability, way of seeing things
• Open with understanding
• Open with compassion
• Open to letting your partner teach you — oh, that can be a tough one

Even when you are in conflict with your partner and angry, too —
even when you are so filled up with your own experience, your own point of view, your own urgency —

Leave enough empty room inside yourself so that you can —
Stay open to your partner.

Staying open is love in action.