 If you believe the commercials and ads running these days every single thing that a company sells would make an excellent Christmas present. As for me, I am giving out my equivalent of a homemade gift. I am giving what I am calling special editions of a novel I hope to sell to a publisher. To those of you who are my family and not aware of what I am giving you, I apologize in advance. I have this delusion that eventually, when I do become a hugely successful writer, the special editions will be worth a lot of money. Yes, I stole this idea from Stephen King.
If you watch Martha Stewart at all you know that whatever you are giving, no matter how expensive, it really isn’t worth a pile of wet snot compared to the thoughtful, time-consuming, ridiculously complicated things she wants you to make for people. I saw something on television with Die Stewart-frauen and she was making homemade pillows. Who the hell makes homemade pillows? If you have enough time to make homemade pillows for everyone on your Christmas list you need to go out and start volunteering or start a dog-walking business or something before you start paper-mache-ing things or dipping candles.
There are a lot of gifts that various advertising people are trying to convince you that you should buy for your friends and relatives that should never ever be bought without serious consideration of the ramifications. For example: lottery tickets. You hear the commercials and see them on television, perhaps, as I do. I don’t know what kind of lottery your state has but I am betting whatever is there you see some kind of equivalent of these lottery commercials they run now. These commercials always show some guy frantically trying to figure out what to buy his wife. He is shopping last minute and everything is closed. What on earth can he do? Why buy a bunch of $1 scratch-off lottery tickets, of course!To those of you who might still be laboring under the delusion that buying lottery tickets for your spouse or girlfriend is a good idea let me dispel those beliefs for you. They are terrible gifts. They suck. In the commercials, because they have writers writing them, each of those tickets ends up being a winner. In real life you are more than likely to end up winning another lottery ticket or, perhaps, a dollar. Unless you buy a lot of lottery tickets and use them to stick all over a large white box and inside that box is something very expensive and in the same class as jewelry if you are walking into your house on Christmas with nothing for your life but lottery tickets you should expect to be sleeping on the couch. Also, you should expect to be sleeping there for a very, very, very, VERY long time.
There is another branch of gift-giving that is somewhat endearing in its persistence that it is a good thing to give out to people you love and that would be the fast-food industry. Is there anyone in your life who would really like to receive a gift certificate for some kind of heart-clogging, heart-attack-inducing fast food thing? I remember getting McDonald’s gift certificates when I was a kid and thinking it was all right but hardly fun to play with. I also remember their commercials that they would run during this time of year and everyone would be smiling and acting like an idiot when they pulled out a piece of paper entitling them to a cheeseburger.
Once again if you were laboring under the delusion that someone you love and who means something to you would prefer to receive one of these rather than something else, anything else, then let me dispel those ideas right now. No one wants to receive a gift certificate for food. Some people seem to think that gift cards or certificates are impersonal. Not me. I love them. I like taking the time to buy my own things rather than risk ending up with something I will not like and I think it is considerate of someone to think of me that way. However, it would be galactically rude for someone to buy me a certificate for food! Fast food!The beer companies have joined the fray over the past few years. I think that this year the commercials I have heard at least suggest the idea that it might be best to buy beer for people who are throwing a holiday party. To me, that makes sense. It is polite to bring something when you are invited to someone’s home for a party. However, I really doubt anyone in your family would like beer for the holidays. As much as Budweiser would like to believe that there are scores of people out there buying cases of Bud for consumption on Christmas day I am doubting this is a gift that will make anyone’s face light up. I would like to, for the record, separate the idea of buying someone a six-pack from signing someone up to some mail-delivered micro-brewery service for a year. At least that would be unique and interesting. Going down to the store for a six-pack of Miller High Life, on the other hand, is not cool. Of course you can probably also buy your lottery tickets there so if you are already going down this route you might as well go the rest of the way and pick up a handful of those as well.
I understand how hard it can be to buy people gifts. It is exhausting. Right now there are probably thousands of husbands wandering aimlessly through malls. They are the ones who look pale and haggard. Their jackets are hanging open much like their mouths and they are probably wearing some kind of stocking cap on their hands. They shuffle aimlessly, look dreadfully pale and, in all senses, look very much like a zombie out of a George A. Romero movie. Many of them probably cling to the hopes that they can stop at a 7-Eleven on the way home and pick up a few lottery tickets and a few air fresheners and that will due. These are the ones clinging to one last shred of sanity.
A while ago I discovered that the internet was a great place to shop. You can stay home. You don’t even need to be dressed. You don’t have to hunt for parking spaces. You don’t have to fight off the crowds of people who are rioting near the toy store for a scrap of some sort of Elmo-shaped doll that does something like pass wind as it laughs. You can have everything delivered at your home and some of the places even wrap the stuff for you and stick on a name tag. For those of you unaware, the internet is actually full of more things that just porn.
Of course you can actually make some homemade gifts. These are very thoughtful and, really, should mean a lot more than anything store-bought. It takes time and effort and thought. If you are like me, it will also leave you weeping with glue on your fingers and wanting to stab yourself with a pair of scissors. Merry Christmas.
Bryan W. Alaspa’s novel Dust is now available in print and eBook format at his website www.bryanalaspa.com and www.amazon.com. . It would make an EXCELLENT Christmas gift for the reader in your family.
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