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Submitted by DVD Talk on December 23rd, 2008

When it comes to giving gifts, some people think I’m lazy and don’t put much thought into it, blindly grabbing whatever is at hand and wrapping it. Alas, just the opposite is true. I agonize over what to get everyone from my close friends to my sister who lives in Spain. (Spain?!? What could she possibly want? Do you know what they do for fun there? They let bulls chase people through the streets. Not criminals or anything either, the people volunteer!) Even after I’ve found something the agony doesn’t stop. I’ll frequently stay up nights wondering if the gift I had already purchased was really the best of all possible gifts.

Then I came up with The System. Like all leaps of genius, it is controversial and some say it is the creation of a mad man. To those rare few who can grasp its elegance and simplicity however, The System is a miracle that cuts down on the time, worry, and even the expense of holiday shopping.

Here’s how it works: In early November create a list of everyone you would like to give a gift to. Put this away and don’t think about.

On December 24^th, get up, go to the bank and take out the sum total of your budget in cash, then head to the largest mall in the area. Buy presents for everyone on the list.

It’s so straightforward! You don’t have to spend months worrying about what to get someone on your list… even if you come up with the prefect gift, a can of bull repellent for my sister maybe, they aren’t going to have it in stock anyway. So why worry about it? You know for a fact you’ll be done shopping in a few hours, because there is no more time. There’s absolutely no hoping to find something better at a later date. There is no later date.

The System also forces you to be creative in a way that shopping in early December when items are still in stock just doesn’t. With only things that no one else in the entire country wants on the shelves, it’s a bit easier to let yourself think outside of the box. I enjoy giving “why was this made” presents. One of the better gifts I’ve given a ceramic tea set that was made to look like it was crafted out of wicker. Now think about that for a moment. Why would anyone want a tea set made of wicker? No one would. But someone, somewhere, decided to take it one step further and make a FAKE wicker set. To what purpose? So you can fool your friends? Is whicker some kind of status symbol that I missed out on? This is a great gift because not only is it useful, but it’s a conversation piece like few others. So take my advice and relax in November and December and then blindly panic on Christmas Eve.

image by House Of Sims

Submitted by BoingBoing Gadgets on December 23rd, 2008

Holiday gift-giving has a timing problem. The best gifts are not those that you find when going down a list of names, checking off each one as you toss something good enough into a cart, but the gifts that call
out someone’s name when you aren’t even shopping at all.

My mother goes the opposite direction. All year long she lays up supplies for unforeseen but inevitable gift crises, stacking her closets and garage with literal piles of goods she got on sale but with no intention other than the possibility of giving them away in the future. (This is why it is not uncommon to receive a gift from my mother that is two or three years old, especially when one of the piles loses integrity and sheers off a face of cheap toys and baby clothing to reveal a rich vein of comedy DVDs and paperbacks.)

Fortunately, Mom’s a pretty good gift giver, so she only uses those items as filler, or as a gift to one of the dozens of extended family members to whom she feels a giftly duty. Her primary gifts, the ones
she’s proud of, are the weird ones that somehow intersect with her family’s quirks. One year I unwrapped a box with a starter bagpipe set, which was perfect: I was genuinely intrigued by it, but never would have bought it one my own.

I don’t actually buy gifts for all my family and friends every year. That is in part because I’m an uncaring jerk, but also because I hate giving something just for the sake of it. I’d rather send a card (or
more likely a text message or email) to remind people that they’re being thought of than something that they’re not going to cherish. By the same token, some years I may spend several hundred dollars on a
gift for one person, while the next year I might not get them anything much at all. Capricious, maybe, but at least it keeps them guessing!

What would be optimal would be a hybrid of both my mother and my systems: an ongoing acquisition of gifts throughout the year as the spirit moves me. It’s just that I so often am not thinking of others
when I’m out browsing the aisles on a hot June day, and perhaps that’s a lesson for me to remember: the whole point of buying a gift for someone is to memorialize your feelings for them, to make them happier
in some small way, and that should be happening all year long. And you can’t do that by giving them something they’re just going to throw away.

Submitted by Nathan on December 23rd, 2008

As a child I never paid attention to the gifts my parents gave to each other. Their gifts were always boring, utilitarian or unremarkable. My Father was also not known for his gift giving prowess, and so my Mother usually ended up with little home-made trinkets, candy, and toys that ended up back in the hands of the gift-giver.

One Christmas, while we sat around the tree laughing and enjoying each others company, my Mother received a large heavy box from my Father, the only present from him that year. As we sat there watching my poor Mother open that box, none of us realized the extent to which my Father had failed that year. Inside the poorly wrapped package was a box of staples. More staples than a person could use in their lifetime (my Mother still has these staples.)My Mother stood and left the room, the silence was too uncomfortable for a group of young children and we soon were back to our own gifts, purchased, thankfully, by our Mother.

It’s been years, and my family laughs about this now. But it’s still a bittersweet laughter, because even after 15 more years, my Father really hasn’t improved much.

Submitted by Uncrate on December 22nd, 2008

Have you ever gifted your way into oblivion? That is, are you so uninterested in what you’re buying for folks that you somehow have ended up giving your sister a bath robe three out of the last four years? Yeah, there’s nothing worse than giving someone the same thing you gave them last year. So unless you’re giving out vintage convertibles every year, you need start paying attention to what you’re buying — because the recipient surely is.

Submitted by Trend Hunter on December 22nd, 2008

Of all the brutal presents I’ve received in my life, none have been so humbling as those from (now) ex-boyfriends. You’d think there would be a seminar that hapless significant others could attend to help guide them along the right path to gift enlightenment. The world might be a happier place, especially around the holidays.

Here are the best of the worst. Some of these gifts came from the same person within the same year!

1. Underwear, two sizes too small.

2. A bra, a letter too large.

3. A pack of cheap disposable razors with a note, “So you don’t use mine.”

4. A three-pack of athletic socks (Don’t get me wrong, I love new socks,
just not from my boyfriend)

5. Barbie-blue eyeshadow.

6. A six-pack of lint rollers (Again, super useful but not particularly
romantic).

7. A 30-pack of Natural Light beer (at a total retail cost of about $13).

-Marissa Brassfield for Trend Hunter

Submitted by NOTCOT on December 19th, 2008

Small children love repetition. If their toy beeps, giggles, sings,squeaks or gongs then you can be guaranteed they will make it do so as many times as possible. And if they can hit something and produce a loud noise? That is like kid nirvana.

Giving children a full drum set or a certain ticklish doll who shall remain nameless will no doubt make them light up with joy … and make their parents curse the day you were born. The same goes for encouraging someone else’s child’s budding musical talents by giving them a kazoo, mini-accordion or sing-along CD by [insert name of fictional musical teenagers or brightly colored puppet here].  Of course, sometimes we give these kinds of gifts on purpose. Whether it’s as a joke on a friend, revenge on a formerly obnoxious younger sibling or a passive-aggressive payback ~ there are endless ways to drive a parent crazy. We know, it’s wrong. But damn if it isn’t funny.

Submitted by DOTW on December 19th, 2008

The Wine and Liquor Accelerator claims to age a drink three years in 10 seconds and 20 years in three minutes. So if you’re too impatient to let your wine or spirits breathe before drinking.

http://www.drinkoftheweek.com/blog/a-gift-for-the-impatient-drinker/

Submitted by Trend Hunter on December 18th, 2008

The idea behind a Secret Santa gift exchange is great: Set a price limit, drop names from a hat and gift away. A completely anonymous Secret Santa gift exchange is somewhat more perilous, however, especially when college kids are thrown into the mix.

My freshman year dorm instituted a Secret Santa gift exchange that would remain completely anonymous. Our gifts were to be labeled and given to our RA, who would then disperse the gifts at our weekly meeting to open. There were some brief guidelines and a $10 limit. Since the exchange was limited to just our hall, there were only 20 of us. How bad could it be?

For my Secret Santa gift, I bought an AC/DC shirt. I received a fart machine. Yes, a fart machine. I considered myself lucky minutes later when one of the super-sheltered twins opened a miniature, um, adult toy.

Since then, the Secret Santa gifts I’ve received as a working professional have been relatively innocuous, but no less welcome in my home: a singing, dancing Big Mouth Billy Bass, a Tamagotchi (about 12 years too late) and a tennis racket bug zapper. Thankfully, all of these gifts–including the fart machine that kicked this tirade off–came with its receipt.

-Marissa Brassfield for Trend Hunter

image by Dan Zen