Survival Christmas, Christmas presents, Spending on gifts for Christmas part 4

Posted by dodo

Bestsellers are also hazardous presents. Many years ago my brother and I each gave the other a copy of Doctor Zhivago. Be careful, too, if you’re going to read the book before giving it, not to turn down the pages or drop it in the bath, and remember that if you do cut off the price, because it’s considered bad form not to do so, the recipient can’t then change it.

Some people choose presents deliberately calculated to irritate. Mothers pointedly give socks and underpants to their married sons, because ’someone’s got to look after you, darling’, and the WVS cook-book to their daughters-in-law because ‘any child could follow the recipes’. Or you could send a Spare Rib calendar, which has a special menstrual table for charting your periods, to a moody sister-in-law; and Karate for Beginners to her battered husband.

A divorced friend claims that he realised that his marriage was coming to an end when his millionaire mother-in-law gave him a bottle of corked red wine for Christmas, and his threeyear-old daughter a jumping furry toy which was on discount at $1 at the local supermarket. Even more poignant is the story of the wife who, a few years ago when video machines were really expensive, saved all year out of the housekeeping to buy one for her husband, and in return only got a grapefruit knife and two peach satin-padded coat hangers. That marriage also broke up shortly afterwards.

But with the best will in the world we all have our disasters. My ex-housekeeper once gave her eighty-year-old mother a frantically expensive footwarmer into which you put both feet like a muff. Unfortunately her mother kept forgetting she‘d got it on, leaping to her feet to answer the door or the telephone, and falling fiat on her face.

Beware, too, the joke present. Last year one girlfriend gave her husband a box of sweets with contraceptives inside them. Somehow the presents got muddled up, and her newly- widowed mother-in-law opened them by mistake.

`I watched, frozen with horror, as she unwrapped one and popped it in her mouth. Her eyes began to roll slightly as she chewed helplessly on the rubber. She was a terrific sport, though, as she pulled it from her mouth, she said, “Well really, my dears, I’m about the only person in this room who has absolutely no use for this at all.” ‘

Another friend committed an even worse howler one year when, knowing that his terribly straight-laced mother was a fan of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, he bought her the famous ‘Derek and Clive’ record. Not having heard the record himself, he had no idea what was on it. Imagine the ghastly silence as they all sat down to listen to it after lunch and a stream of four-letter words, obscenities and general sexual depravity poured out. The friend was so embarrassed that he left home that afternoon.

Be careful of giving back presents you’ve been given to the original donor. If by some hideous chance you do, the only solution is to say airily: ‘People always give presents they want themselves, so I thought I’d get one for you this year.’

Finally, there’s always the present whose function you can’t identify. One of our house guests this year was given by the Turkish lady who runs her local off-licence a 2 ft by 3 ft strip of knitted wool in chilblain mauve, which tapered into long ties at each end. After much hysterical speculation, we all decided that it must be a bottom bra for the pear-shaped figure.

Don’t forget to budget for Christmas boxes for the paper boy, the dustmen, the milkman and the postman: they jolly well deserve it, particularly in the country. If you can’t afford to tip the dustmen, you should instantly move to an area like Lambeth, with a left council that doesn’t approve ofsuch capitalist tokens of appreciation.

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