The perfect Xmas gift... (and other elephant figurines)

I have a reputation for being a Good Gift Giver.  I pride myself on that label, much like I pride myself on my fabulous risotto and my perky breasts.  Everything else really isn’t brag-worthy.

I developed a knack of being a Good Gift Giver after years of study.  I grew up in a family that often got it wrong.  Half of my family is Japanese so without fail every year I would get a figurine.  It’s as my friend James – himself from a Taiwanese family – would say, shaking his head sadly as though mourning the loss of a family member or, more likely, the introduction of another Lalique.  “Asians, man,” he’d say wistfully.  “Asians can’t resist a good figurine.”

There was always someone in the family prepared to overdo it, too.  You could watch a National Geographic special on TV and casually mention how cute elephants are and come Christmas you’d need a china cabinet to hold all of the various pachyderms in cute and cuddly poses that you would have received.  Still, better than the time I mentioned I was getting over the arachnophobia.  My family believed in tough love, Father Christmas may agree or not.

One year at Christmas my grandmother, failing to think of any good gifts for us, gifted us all with gag gifts.  I’ll never forget unwrapping my gift, opening the box, and hearing a bloodcurling scream and a crash of glass.  Shocked, I nearly phoned 999 and tried desperately to remember how to do CPR.  Meanwhile my grandma laughed.  It turns out the screaming and crashing glass wasn’t a family member doing  bodily harm in another room, it was my gift.  She had given me a handmirror that would, upon sight of a person, scream and pretend to shatter, presumably from the ugliness of the person viewing in it.

Oh, how my grandma laughed.

Well, she laughed up until we put her in a home that ensured daily access to allotted sachets of Whiskas.

Growing up in this environment, I learnt how to suss the good stuff.  If someone so much as twitches in a direction of telling me something they want in, say, February, I will make sure that said item arrives and is safely stowed in one of any number of hidey holes I have by the first week of March, where it will bide its time until the holidays.  I will work and suss out the best possible present for someone if it takes me 100.5 hours of Googling and a minor run-in with some over-the-counter tranquilisers.  Mention that you are hugely in love with 19th century Italian spotlights and have dreamt of owning one for the duration of your life and I will make it my mission to find one.  More often than not I succeed.  I like to think this buys me out of some purgatory time, but you never know.

A lot of women say that they find it so boring when their partner or husband buys them exactly what they asked for.  Me, I think it’s brilliant.  If I have a wish list it’s because I rather wish I had those things.  If I put it on a list and give it to you, that’s me saying it’s ok with me if you buy that.  Often my wish list is full of practical things, but then it would be, wouldn’t it?  If I want a sparkly sequined handbag I can buy that myself.  If I want a new doormat then knock yourself out, I’d love for you to get me one.  One of my brothers-in-law thinks that way, too, hence the list he handed out this Christmas had such knuckle-whitening funsters like “Husqvarna headphones” and “Industrial weed killer” (note to self: don’t eat at his house for a while).

Still, others let you know that while you may go the distance, sometimes it’s the simple things they love.  My other brother-in-law and his wife swapped gifts last year.  I had busted my ass to find an out-of-print Railway timetable for my trainspotting brother-in-law and a spa kit for my over-worked sister-in-law.  My brother-in-law gave his fastidious wife a new ironing board cover.  She, in turn, gave her rather broadly girthed beloved a pair of trousers with an expandable waistband for those all-you-can-eat-buffet days.  They both declared them the single greatest gifts they had ever received.

You can never win, really.

I’m hoping the government announces that 2010 will be the Year of the Gift Certificate.  I’m not sure I can face another 100 hours of Googling.
 
 
 
 

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