17.53: The GO Guide to Gift Giving
NIDA: Merry Holidays, everyone! Have you ever noticed that merry-making only tends to happen around this time of year? Why is that? Maybe it has something to do with eggnog - you only get that at this time of the year too. I suppose a strong dose of merry in the ol' nog will keep anyone happy during the holiday season. And you're going to need that nog if you get caught up in the holiday gift-giving/gift-getting/gift-returning Frenzy more commonly known as November and December. Here at the GO, Lancaster's premier international design unit and pontificatorium, we try to stay as far away from that hot mess as we can. We even go so far as to avoid driving near the mall, which is a bit difficult since it sits on two important state roads/major thoroughfares (read: a five-mile stretch of two-laned potholes) and not driving those roads cuts off the northwestern corner of the county. But what good ever came out of East Pete or Landisville anyway? And forget E-town...but I digress. The Frenzy is a stressful experience, one that can send you into paroxysms of loose elbows (those stores can get really crowded), adrenaline overdose, epic battles of tug o' war over some long-sought, high-demand item, and the dreaded paralysis of queuing....I'm having palpitations just thinking of that nightmare. O Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of All That I Can Get My Grubby Little Nailbitten Hands On. Can't you just taste the Founding Fathers' approval?
If you must dive into and partake of the Frenzy, here are a few GO-tested tips that will help you get through the madness with your brains and your balls intact. (We hope.)
Buy yourself more time. This will help you save some money. If you can hold off giving gifts until later, you'll be able to score those sweet sweet after-Christmas deals. Guess you could be smart and buy gifts during the year, but where is the fun in that? There are several ways to buy yourself more time. My personal favorite is to cultivate an air of aloofness during the year. Keep this up long enough and it'll have the added benefit of decreasing the number of gifts you have to buy, as people give up on trying to keep in touch with you. If you happen to be one of those people who actually like people, then this might not work for you. Another method to try is to be Asian, the kind that celebrate the New Year and give gifts then, rather than that whole December/winter solstice ritual. One drawback to this plan that readers will most likely pick up on right away is that there are a lot of New Years bouncing around Asia. I myself generally celebrate three per year. This upcoming year will see me traveling between 2008, 2551, and 4706, to appease the God of the East and regain my human form and lead my ruthless street gang, the Wing Kong, to victory. Muahahahaha....oh. Erm. Right. Moving on.
Green your gift wrapping. I like unwrapping gifts. I've always like unwrapping gifts. Mostly because it means that I've been given a gift. Unwrapping a gift is 9 times out of 10 the magic moment of the whole gift-getting process - what is it what could it be what did I get? But I've never really seen the point of wrapping gifts. Don't get me wrong, I like giving gifts - it's just the fact that there is an entire industry devoted to wrapping paper gets me. And that you have to buy rolls of the stuff and the fact that their being in rolls is not in the least bit helpful when you're trying to wrap an oddly shaped gift. And then you either end up with a crappy looking gift or you have to go off and try to find an appropriately sized box. And then you're left with a mountain of balled up used wrapping paper and boxes. I figure if you're going to end up with a bunch of trash anyway, you might as well just start out with trash. So forgo the expensive shiny paper and use whatever you have lying around the house. Or better yet, use the wrapping paper from something somebody else gave you.
Have your personal assistant do your shopping for you. Oh, you don't have a personal assistant?
Socks and/or underwear. You can never go wrong with socks or underwear. Except for that one year when we all mocked Nick for having achieved an age that broke two digits, a milestone marking decrepitude and a year of all clothes and no toys. I laughed and laughed, secure in the knowledge that 8-year-olds only ever get toys. Laughed until I'd opened every last present and was sitting there with a stack of sweaters and other articles of clothing that could not possibly be mistaken for toys. That might be the beginning of my misgivings over the holiday giving season. Anyways, socks and underwear are a crappy gift for a child but for a mid-twenty-something who doesn't particularly enjoy doing laundry, they're perfect.
