Blogs

Today is Christmas. This is the one day of the year when all of us can take a break and relax; for the first time in months we are not either having to get ready for Christmas, cleaning up after Christmas or planning for next Christmas.

We can sit back and enjoy the day.

Christmas is here in all its glory. Months of planning, shopping, selecting presents, wrapping presents, hiding presents, losing presents and buying more presents is finally over. Long and arduous searching for those special gifts for loved ones, friends and family, has at last been reduced to 20 minutes of frenzied paper ripping, box and bag opening and gleeful shouts of joy and expressed heartfelt gratitude.

When I think of all the work that goes into Christmas, I have a hard time when I hear people say, "I wish Christmas would last all year." That's about the time I respond, "If it did, we'd all be dead from exhaustion by July."

A new sock Christmas

This year for Christmas, I got socks, underwear, gloves and a Santa Claus tie that lights up and plays, "Jingle Bell Rock" when I poke Santa in his plump belly. Don't think my family got me these gifts because they have bad taste, no imagination or dislike me.

They got me these gifts because I asked for them. So, you see, I am the one with no imagination and bad taste. That's not true, either. I actually wanted these gifts.

You may wonder why, when there are so many things I could ask for at Christmas, that I would want socks, underwear, gloves and a once-a-year-use tie? It's simple. They are practical - except for the tie of course - and I needed them. All my socks were wearing thin, my underwear drooping and my hands were cold because I lost my gloves in October and have been waiting for Christmas for someone to buy me new ones.

Christmas tradition

We have a tradition in our family to avoid getting unwanted gifts. At Thanksgiving, each person in our family writes out a list of Christmas gifts they would like to receive and posts the list on the refrigerator. As people buy gifts, they cross the purchased items off the various lists. This way, there are seldom any unwanted gifts arriving in our house at Christmas.

In fact, our son Jason takes the idea to the point where he assigns specific gifts to different people so there can be no accidental slip ups in getting duplicate gifts on Christmas morning. It works, and he always acts really surprised when he opens his gifts.

The bad gift pledge

To also ensure a successful gift giving season, we all take a pledge over the Thanksgiving turkey carcass not to buy anything for anyone that is advertised on television as "Not available in stores."

By doing this, we have saved ourselves over the years from things like the "amazing electronic back scratcher, that doubles as salad tongs, which is only available through this exclusive television offer, for the unheard of low price of $29.95 plus shipping and handling charges."

Likewise, we have all escaped receiving wiggling fish, mounted on wall plaques that burst into country and western songs when they sense motion in the room.

We also ban buying each other any gift that is made and advertised by Ronco. I can assure you, you will never see me, or member of my family, standing on a street corner and pulling from our pocket a Popeil Pocket Fisherman to do some angling in the city fountain. Nor do we pack tiny, powerful sewing machines in our suitcases when we travel that can make curtains or sew zippers at the drop of a button.

Nope. You won't see any of us getting any of that stuff at Christmas. We already have it all sitting in the back basement gathering dust, from those years before we created our oath against "not available in stores" Christmas gifts.

- Myron Kukla

Myron Kukla is a professional journalist, writer and owner of the West Michigan-based marketing company WriteStuff. Kukla is the author of two books of humor, Confessions of a Baby Boomer: Memories of Things I Haven't Forgotten Yet and Guide to Surviving Life. He has also just published two ebooks on Amazon.com, Chomp and Something in the Blood.