h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Thinking about the above two last posts - it has occurred to me that my wife's daughter once bought me a shaving kit complete with all a nice moisturising aftershave.

I was most pleased as I stroked my full beard in thanks

"sometimes it's hard to be gracious when there was obviously no thought at all put in" [Deb]

Thought might have been put into it, but misreading other people happens a lot in real life as well as in TV sitcoms. I like to think about the joke that the three wise men traveled thousands of miles to bring perfume to a baby. That's how it started: a misunderstanding so huge that it doomed the holiday to frustration for thousands of years.

Might there be something about Christmas that just isn't right? Or something right that isn't getting through? And won't likely get through for some time to go?

http://www.auburn.edu/~vestmon/Gift_of_the_Magi.html

[If winter is coming, and you care about the people in your life, give or do something nice that will make the coming cold season happier for them]

Slightly off topic, but I can't resist the urge to tell this...

My parents were once given a box of chocolates, wrapped in beautiful paper, by someone who had been given it and didn't know what to do with it.
So, since it was nicely wrapped and all, they gave it to some acquaintances.
... Who in turn offered it to someone else.

... Who opened it, and found the little card they had put in there themself for the first couple, whom they had given the box in the first place.


Proof - if any was needed - that boxes of chocolates around Christmas time may well be too many to count or care about.

My mother was adamantly against chocolates as gifts. We never dared give them to anyone. If I bought any, I ate them myself .

I can't remember receiving anything truly awful for Christmas, perhaps I've blocked the memory if I did.

Although my sister once gave me an anatomically shaped pacifier one year as a gag gift.

But one of my favorite things about Christmas is *giving* gifts. I know everyone says that, but I absolutely deliberate over what the perfect thing for someone might be and strive to find something unusual and appreciated. Usually I hit the mark, last year it was an R2-D2 wallet for my sister, this year my best would probably have been a tiny "crystal" Christmas tree about 2 inches high with changing LED lights that I found for my grandma at a yard sale back in the fall for a quarter.

But a couple years ago I made a gift for my mother-in-law. I do cross-stitch needlework as a hobby. I made one several years ago for the mil, which she really liked and immediately hung on the wall. It had a bird nest and some kind of saying about God watching over every nest. She liked it so well she asked if I would make *two* more pieces to accompany it.

These things take awhile to make, so it was a couple years later when I made her the next one, which was a cute little bluebird in a nest that I stitched on linen and framed in a grapevine wreath with a ribbon hanger. I was especially proud of this one, as it was totally adorable. So you can imagine how let down I felt watching her open it, and saying "What is this?" I explained that it was another cross stitch to go with the one I had given her before. "Oh." Not the least bit impressed, set the box aside and moved on to the next present.

She never thanked me, and it's never been hung on the wall.

The following year I told my husband to communicate to her that we didn't want to exchange gifts, that they should concentrate on the grandkids. I haven't given her anything since.

Off topic.

I only found out very recently that was we (in the UK) call a baby's dummy is called a pacifier by those in North America.

Before this I was most bemused by it as to me it sounded like they might call a ballistic missile or tank or something horribly military.
Or maybe just something to club them over the head with or something.


Anyway I digress...

That's okay.

Just don't trigress. or quadrigress.