The 2007 Brief Guide to Gifting: A Primer for Advanced Beginners (Part Two)

Now that the last nutrients of our Thanksgiving meal have been metabolized and we jump into the breach of the winter festivities, you may be feeling the first nervous flutter of panic. There is so much to do; so much shopping and wrapping and shipping to accomplish; so much good cheer to dispense and happy memories to make; so many spiritual opportunities to embrace and so many prayers for peace on earth to send out into the heavenly void.

Honestly, I don't think you'll get it all done in time, but that's no reason to fall apart. The journey through one department store or mail-order catalogue begins with a single step. If the Three Kings could get across the desert at night on camels loaded down with spices and perfumes for Baby Jesus, you can make it across the parking lot in your Nikes with your credit card to Baby Gap.

When we last met, I encouraged you to review basic gifting principles and begin to nurture your embryonic inner-shopper. Hopefully, you already have a list of giftees in mind and have your Loved Ones arranged in a separate category. As we discussed previously, most people understand the difference between a gift of friendship and a gift of eternal devotion. Give a friend a half gallon of high quality olive oil (which, by the by, is a great gift); give your darling (or me) a tour through the olive groves of Tuscany.

By next year, I'll have some sort of quiz that you can take at home and determine where your gifting strengths and weaknesses lie. But this year, we are exploring the wide array of potential gifts that a beginning gifter is well-advised to avoid. Something of the giver is conveyed with each gift, and if you care that your gift will reflect well on you, you want to avoid anything that just screams, "I didn't really have a clue what to give you so I'm giving you a Reflexology Tub Mat from the Lillian Vernon Holiday Collection. And the shipping was free."

Gifting should look like an effortless act predicated on thoughtful insight, married to an unerring sense of style as well as respect for economy. How hard can that be?

While time and space do not permit a comprehensive guide to bad gifts (and more are appearing every time I open my mailbox and find another catalogue), the following categories should offer sufficient, if rough, guidance.

Outrageously Priced Stuff That Can Only be Sold in December: This is really an Über-Category, because every retailer, at every stop on the Big Wheel of Retail, is counting on you, the gifter, to pay for stuff you wouldn't dream of purchasing January through mid-November.

The subcategories follow below, but a good example is the $90 Pocket Compass:

Expertly crafted by a family-owned company in the Scottish Highlands, this high-quality compass is styled after an old-fashioned pocket watch. Its high-tech engineering provides fast, clear and reliable reading and may be engraved with up to three initials.

This is like giving someone an accurate sundial, or a precision front-loading musket. If your giftee is a real trekker, they have strong map reading skills, a GPS device and a compass made by a German instrument company. If your giftee is relying on an engraved compass made to look like an old-fashioned pocket watch to guide him through the wilderness to safety, advise him/her also to stay calm, stay put and search and rescue will arrive shortly.

Stuff for People Who Drink and Elevate It to a Religious Experience: My knowledge of wine is limited to recognizing that it comes in a couple of colors and is served in special glasses. While I appreciate wine's ability to enhance my conversational charm and increase my adorable clumsiness, I am incapable of explaining why wine connoisseurs can take on a look of transported bliss while choosing, discussing, decanting and drinking. I confess that I am not qualified to comment on this category, which will not, however, prevent me from nattering on. And perhaps the following gifts are, indeed, absolutely essential for the oenophiles on your list. You decide.

Apparently, "personalizing" all things alcohol-related is extremely important. I can only assume that after dipping your Clef du Vin Pocket Wine Tasting Tool in enough glasses, it helps to have your name printed on everything. A person would hate to go home, after all, with someone else's tool. So, you may just assume that all wine/spirit gifts are available for personalizing, monogramming, embossing, imprinting, scent marking…what have you.

Beyond your common glasses and corkscrews and decanters, there are a whole lotta wine-gifts made from barrels or parts of barrels. Thus, you can buy and give a Barrel Top Lazy Susan, a Barrel Top Clock, a Barrel Stave Tea Light Candle Holder or a Barrel Stave and Wine Cork Trivet Kit.

If mere wine-related tsotskes won't do, consider offering your giftee a wine education with The Complete Wine Taste and Aroma Kit. The kit allows the student to "master your wine senses" with many vials of essences, aromas, scents and samples of varietals (whatever those are).

And, if your giftee spends an inordinate amount of time with his or her new wine kit, he/she can go on to master wine senselessness and check out WineLoversMeet.com, an on-line dating site for...well…enthusiasts who love wine and want to share their love with others.

There are also whole cases of gifts for people who want to remember their wine experiences, but probably can't, since they were half-way-to-hammered when they had them. For these giftees, a Wine Connoisseur's Diary and a Wine Memories Album are available (don't forget to personalize! Bacchus help the wine drinker who gets someone else's wine diary and can't remember having a 1996 Bahans-Haut-Brion with the rack of lamb and the baby asparagus the week prior, while watching the European Sommelier Championship.)

If wine kitsch, wine education, wine romance and wine scrap booking fail, there's always wine fun with games like Wineopoly, Bouquet - The Wine Game, the Wine Tasting Party Kit and World Wine Challenge. Or, you could just a give a bottle of wine.

Refined Palate Gifts: Similar to Extreme Indulgence Gifts, people are compelled to give and receive edible gifts in December. I'm not talking about Christmas hams or Godiva here. I'm talking the Artisinal Salt Set and the Chocolate Covered Pear. The Refined Palate Gifts cater to the extremely sensitive taste buds of certain individuals and manifest as Pesto Gift Sets and Cave Aged Cheeses nestled into sea grass baskets and swaddled with hemp or velveteen bags. Ditto, coffee produced on 2 square feet of Amazon Rainforest or alcohol distilled by members of an ascetic religious order and stored in ancient casks throughout the cathedral's catacombs.

I don't encourage this line of gifts. First off, if your giftees have palates so refined that they can distinguish between salts that originated in the Red Sea, Dead Sea, Caspian Sea, Sea of Tranquility or Sea of Despair, they need to remove themselves from the rest of us here in primitive society. No good can come from an evolutionary drift toward ever-increasing pickiness. I encourage these giftees to make quick, like hybrid bunnies, to some sort of an intentional (and isolated) community devoted to the pursuit of virginal olive oils and condiments so perfectly exclusive that they were never meant for this world.

I, also, object to gifts like the single Chocolate Covered Pear, but not on the basis of its pear-ness or its chocolate-ness. Food gift sets are made to be shared or put out on a holiday buffet table. No one hoards their Chambord Black Raspberry Jam or tiny pots of Mediterranean Pimentos for themselves. If you give someone a $30 (including shipping) Chocolate Covered Pear, the best they can do is pass it around and have everyone take a bite out of it. Later, they can tell you, "Hey. Me and Doug and the kids ate that pear you gave us last night. It was pretty good." Not a lot of bang for your pear buck, if you ask me.

Weird Horticulture: I'm not talking beautiful blooming amaryllis or exotic orchids here; I'm referring to horticultural gifts that are not entirely awful, so much as under-whelming. Case in point, I once received a Shitake Mushroom Log - sort of a damp piece of wood that, if kept wet and in the dark, was guaranteed to produce a fine crop of edible fungi. About all I could think of to say was, "Oh. Mushrooms. I like mushrooms." Then I put it in my closet and forgot about it. Although no actual mushrooms ever grew, I eventually noticed that a lot of shitake spore fuzz had grown on my leather shoes and jacket. It was, at best, an annoying gift.

It's hard to get really ecstatic about this category of neutral gifts. You aren't likely to witness joyful rapture on the face of your giftee if you put any of the following under the tree (or wherever you stack your presents): Year of Seeds (Yipee! A WHOLE YEAR!), Sunflower Growing Kit (in the event that your sunflowers don't grow spontaneously under your bird feeder like mine do), Miniature Lemon Tree (when life gives you miniature lemons, make miniature lemonade!), Money Tree (may or may not produce actual money), Canine Topiary (grows in the shape of a dog- 25 breeds available), and Edible Flowers Kit (you can't eat them until you grow them, so this is really the gift of delayed gratification).

As an aside, carnivorous plants make poor holiday gifts. Sure, they're cute and appealing, but bringing a flesh-eating plant home during the bustle of the holidays is just irresponsible. The plant may suffer from neglect or ingest something harmful like the dried summer sausage from the Hickory Farms basket or tinsel from the tree. Wait until January to bestow this gift.

Stuff That Just Sits There (Forever): This is the category of gifts that serves no known useful or decorative purpose. The most remarkable example that I found is the Garden-Size Stone Cairn (as opposed to the Megalithic-Size Stone Cairn). In the event that you're uninformed about cairns, both big and small, let me enlighten you with this excerpt for the Signals Holiday Catalogue:

In countries and cultures around the world, from the Scottish highlands to the Arctic of the Inuit and stupas of Tibet, stone cairns have served as directional markers. Because they so often point the way home, they represent safety, hope and friendship. Made of real stones and a steel rod, our miniature cairn is a powerful symbol of home and life's journey. No two are alike and you can arrange yours as you choose. About 11" high for indoors or out.

First off, no one on your gift list is so artistically challenged that they are incapable of stacking up a pile of seven or eight rocks. While I applaud Signals for managing to make the idea of "real stones" and "no two alike" sound appealing, your giftee is not likely to appreciate a gift that they can acquire all by themselves by walking out into the yard. Besides, do you really need a "symbol of home" to put in your real home; and do you want an 11" marker to "point the way home" if you're already stretched out on your couch?

Give this dopey gift (and anything similar like the Cast Iron Hand) a wide berth. You are NOT this desperate...at least, not yet.

Esoteric and Potentially Life-Threatening Physical Activity/Fitness Gear: Every year, retailers fan our dreams of a fitter, healthier, leaner body in the New Year by introducing new systems of exercise, activity and accompanying equipment complete with instructional DVDs. (I refer you to the Slide Mat and Wobble Board introduced in the last decade that made us, somehow, believe that sliding from side-to-side and wobbling were our path to fabulous tightening and toning.) These are usually advertised and packaged in a way that makes using the equipment fun and effortless, and the resulting hard-body just a magical accident.

There are many opportunities to make horrible gifting errors in this category. One of the more egregious is the home Pole Dancing Instruction Kit, with accompanying pole (for the person in your life who had dreams of becoming a topless dancer, but who yielded to parental pressure and became a hydrogeologist instead). I can (sort of) appreciate the kind of fun that having one's own personal pole might produce. But I beg you to think of both the giftee's children and how she/he will find the words to describe it for the For Sale section of the San Juan Islander when the time comes (and it will).

I confess that I, too, was the victim of an ABLounger 2. This is, essentially, a nylon patio chaise, spring-hinged in the middle. The idea was to sort of fold yourself in half while stretched out in the chair and, thereby, really work your core abs, or whatever that muscle group is that, on me, looks like I'm a marsupial carrying young in my pouch. The real exercise with my AB Lounger took place during assembly. After that, I used it as the perfect drying rack for sweaters and delicate washables.

I do sympathize with your weakness in this area. I am not immune to either gifting others or myself with weird workout DVDs like Hula Cardio for Beginners or the Deluxe Reboundology System (mini-tramp). In fact, I'm resisting (so far) the temptation to buy the iGallop - Brookstone's answer to the equine-challenged.

I love horses and I love riding, but experience has taught me (over and over) that I shouldn't mix the two. The iGallop looks like a saddle on a post and engages Tri-Axial motion (like my friend Sky said, it would be a much better world if more things were equipped with Tri-Axial motion) that, when properly used, simulates horseback riding. Before going down to Brookstone to take a test ride, I already saw myself putting on a velvet riding cap, mounting my iGallop and spending a morning iRiding to my iHounds, trailing the scent of my iFox.

The warm-up/trot/race & circulate (?) workout on the iGallop almost made me create an exception. But I think it's best to face reality - if your giftee is a couch tuber in November, he/she will likely be the same in January. Perhaps the best thing you can give in this category is a gift certificate for a pair of walking shoes and a Jack Russell Terrier. The terrier is not likely to gather cobwebs in a corner like the Pilates-izer II most certainly will.

Inspirational Gifts That Do Not Inspire: These are the gifts that are offered in spiritually minded catalogues that, somehow, make you think that your giftee would find a higher level of inner peace if only she/he had a table top labyrinth to trace with a chopstick. The thought is well-intentioned, but, somehow, it's more sad than inspiring to watch a man at his desk push sand around in a small box with a tiny wooden rake. Nothing says, "I have given up all hope of finding a meaningful existence" as much as watching someone, dispiritedly, playing with their portable Zen Garden.

Other examples in this category are gifts that would be meaningful, but for the fact that they've been pirated by Disney. While I am not Jewish, and cannot say with perfect certainty that that The Little Mermaid is not mentioned in the Torah, I do not embrace the Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Menorah or any of its grotesque Disney kin. Unless I missed something in bible study and Curious George was in the stable at Bethlehem, or Buzz Lightyear led the Jews out of Egypt, I prohibit you from hybridizing the sacred with the cartoon. (Although, I am willing to grant a variance regarding Peanuts characters.)

Somehow, I don't object if you wish to give your Pagan friends a Home Stonehenge Kit, as long as it's tasteful. It's difficult to make your own henge, and, sometimes, authenticity has to be sacrificed for convenience.

Your Photo on Everything: While your Loved Ones will, likely, appreciate a nice photograph of you (as long as you're attractive, and I'm sure you are), only your mother wants to wake up to your image on her coffee mug. With digital photography, it is possible to get your photo woven onto a blanket, enlarged into a wall mural, screened onto boxers (the undies, not the dog…not yet, anyway) and printed on everything from a tote bag to a diaper bag to a messenger bag. Don't burden your giftee with more of you. No one likes you that much.

Gifts Purchased for Men that Men Loathe: Only a relatively small segment of the male population appreciates excessive sentimentality or indulgence in their gifts. It's tempting for women to give men the kind of presents that reflect the way women would LIKE men to be, rather than the way men really are. Women tend to believe that if men were only exposed to finer things and novel experiences, they would naturally embrace the opportunity to experiment.

This hasn't been my experience. The men I know settled on a set of acceptable interests and activities in utero, and do not like to stray toward anything more novel. Fishermen fish, miniature war-enactment enthusiasts pour lead for their tiny soldiers, and techies like gizmos and gadgets. I've had no luck giving hot-air balloon ride gift certificates, ballroom dancing lessons, leather gym bags, manly jewelry, cashmere socks and concert tickets to men that didn't already come with a pre-existing passion for ballooning, luxury goods or music.

Apparently, you can lead a guy to a hot-air balloon gondola, but you can't make him crawl into the basket. The best-received gifts I ever gave men were relatively unremarkable: a sturdy sandwich spreader, a short-wave radio, a stainless steel thermos and the Complete Far Side Leather-Bound Set (the exception, which is of course, a compendium of remarkable genius).

But, while I admit to having limited success in gifting men, I have enough good sense to know that most men would recoil from the following: Scrabble Letter Cuff Links, Cuff Link Display Case (monogrammable), the Art of Shaving Kit (which includes sandalwood scented after-shave balm, pre-shave oil and shaving cream), and the puzzling: Hidden Message Collar Stays":

[S]ubtle stainless steel collar stays featur[ing] 12 different reasons why you love him from "You're so Handsome1" to "You make me Laugh!"

(Good to know that the collar stays are also monogrammable and come in a cognac leather carrying case with blue faux-suede interior and magnetic closure).

Self-Indulgent Stuff for a Planet Where No One Is THAT Self-Indulgent: I'm not criticizing pampering or a level of luxury that is really pleasurable. A cashmere sweater is far cozier and lighter than a chunky sweater knitted from coarse and scratchy Shetland wool. Really good freshly ground coffee made in a worthy pot and served in a china mug is one of life's greatest joys, and cannot even be approached by a stream of lukewarm vending machine instant splurted into a styrofoam cup with a powdered non-dairy creamer chaser. Good books, good music, good food and drink, and good companionship are the cornerstones of a civilized life, and it makes perfect sense to offer gifts that enhance the experience.

What I reject are pretentious indulgent gifts that create confusion or a burden instead of comfort. It's one thing to enjoy an eye pillow when you're trying to de-stress after a long day. It's another thing to stand in front of your Eye Pillow Set and try and decide between the silk eye pillow, the cashmere eye pillow, the freezer-chilled eye pillow and the lavender-and-balsam-filled eye pillow. It's just a bother to have to decide how and when you will rotate your eye pillows when just ONE eye pillow would give you all the happiness you could ever hope to enjoy from ANY eye pillow.

Thus, grossly indulgent gifts like the Cashmere Travel Set (cashmere eye mask, cashmere neck roll, cashmere travel throw, cashmere flight booties) should be purged from your list. Airplane travel is a dirty and messy business. If you aren't getting a Bloody Mary poured down your neck on take-off (Cancun, 1984), dragging some piece of apparel through the disinfectant splattered on the tiny toilet seat (every time I fly), or sitting in the upholstered equivalent of a Petri dish on an airline seat that has never, never, never been cleaned, you are bathing in an atmosphere of bacteria, molds and viruses. There are a few worse places to drag delicate, dry-clean-only, luxury fibers (like a bog or a wastewater treatment facility), but cashmere does not belong in your in-flight comfort kit.

Super-indulgent gifts like Australian Birchwood Toothpicks in a Personalized Brass Case (for the diner who rejects "cheap restaurant toothpicks") or gloves made from Wild Amazonian Peccary and Baby Alpaca Lining say two things: one, you're trying too hard and two, your giftee is a doily. (Also, anything that is still qualifies as a "baby" should be allowed to keep its fleece, pelt or flesh until adolescence.)

Embellished Gifts: All three of these next categories are less "gifts" and more "features of gifts". I counsel you to be aware that monogramming, bamboo-ing and croc-embossing a gift doesn't make it a fabulous gift if it was already only marginal at the get-go. That is, a croc-embossed monogrammed traveling toothbrush holder is still a toothbrush holder. It's probably a very NICE toothbrush holder, but there is only so much joy that a toothbrush holder can bring.

All Things Monogrammable: I don't know why anyone would be particularly proud of their initials unless they spell out something interesting. If your giftee's name is Garth Nelson Underwood , you can buy the monogrammed golf balls with GNU printed in gold. Likewise, your purchase of the monogrammable bath towels will allow Yvonne Ann Kempler to indulge in her YAK pride. And, yes, I see you visualizing the monogrammed leather cigar case for Terrance Ivan Templeton, the monogrammable therapeutic slippers for Alice Sherwood Sutherland and the monogrammable ice bucket for Paul Owen Olsen-Parsons.

But, on balance, I don't see that the gift is improved just because the giftee's initials are emblazoned on the Plaid Travel Valet, the Chenille Throw, the Croc-Embossed Wine Dossier, the monogrammable candles ($50…can you imagine? I say give the person a bill with Grant on it along with a lighter and let them make their own decision), the Bedside Carafe, the Gemstone Wine Stoppers, the Two-Tone Cashmere Scarf, the Monogrammed Silver-Plated Note Pad and Card Case, the Purse Mirror, the Leather Desktop Catchall or the monogrammable Grand Pilsner beer glasses.

Unless your giftee lives in a commune or collective, he/she will be able to maintain ownership of the gift even if it's not personalized, and he/she probably has the wits to recognize it without the identifying monogram. I doubt that the absence of a monogram on one's Leather Watch Display Case creates a lot of confusion in most households.

Stuff Made From Bamboo Because We Can Make Stuff from Bamboo: I know bamboo is good. It's durable, sustainable, versatile and attractive. I know that pandas rely on it and that it's very useful if you want to torture someone slowly and painfully. But I don't know why everything has to be converted into bamboo this year. I've got no objection to it, but I caution you from giving a gift based solely on its bamboo-ness and no other feature, such as the Bamboo Stand for Pet Bowls, Bamboo Jewelry Armoire, Bamboo Cheese Tray, and BambooYoga Hamper.

Croc-Embossed Stuff for a World Gone Made with Croc-Embossing: My guess is that market researchers decided that Croc Embossing conveyed the sort of exclusiveness that REAL crocodile enjoys. Since crocodile and alligator leather is expensive and some species are protected by law from being converted into wallets and belts, Croc-Embossing is an attempt to create faux luxury. And, it has gained the approval of the National Association for the Advancement of Crocodile Protection (the NAACP...you've heard of it?).

Its single contribution when applied as a texture to any gift is that it makes the surface bumpy. That's it. Bumpy. Like All Things Bamboo, I don't object to Croc-Embossing, but I don't know why everything needs to be suddenly bumpy any more than I comprehend why things are more appealing if they're made from bamboo.

Again, I caution you from gifting based on bumpiness, and hope to dissuade you from the Croc-Embossed Quartz Desk Clock, Chinese Money Tree in Croc-Embossed Leather Pot, Bible Cover, Coasters, Ashtray, Small Dog Harness, Opera Wallet and, last but not least, the Croc Embossed Croc (they're moody).

I predict that by next year, the categories of Things Bamboo and Things Croc-Embossed will interbreed for an exciting new pantheon of Croc-Embossed-Bamboo-Gifts to attract the shoppers of 2008. But that's NEXT year...

That's all, gifters. This is the best we can do in the few weeks of shopping left to us. I hope this Primer is helpful to you and that you will enjoy every possible gifting success in December. Last year, I asked for a Personal Submarine or a bowl. I didn't receive either one, so I don't have much confidence in any of you ponying up this year. Be that as it may, I wish you Bon Hiver and the true gifts of the holiday season - love, a warm hearth and the turning toward the Light.

Merry meet,
Merry part,
And Merry meet again.

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Ingrid is currently living and respectably employed in Austin, Texas with a firm specializing in environmental law. She hopes to get back home to the San Juan Islands next spring to stay.
While Ingrid is spiritually promiscuous, she credits her guru, Jimmy Buffet, for her mantra..."If we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane." Besides a passion for Tiki Studies, Ingrid is borderline biblio-obsessive. She is an old-school Libran - i.e., she won't be leading the Revolution, but she'll work to make it an attractive affair and hire the musicians and caterers."

Her column appears every other Thursday in San Juan Islander. To contact Ingrid, send emails to ingrid@sanjuanislander.com

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