It’s less than a week now before the biggest gift-giving
occasion of the year — as well as a deeply significant religious
event for many of us. So TAS readers, like me, may have
concluded it’s about time to decide what to get for the people on
our lists.
As has been reported in this space, there’s a great
selection of new books available this season (tease to “Books
for Christmas” and the Buy the Book
feature). But even TAS readers do not live by the lamp
alone.
So how about a local neighborhood stimulus program that
doesn’t include the cloying clutches of the nanny state, financed
by money we don’t have but that our children and grandchildren will
have to come up with?
What we don’t have to do this year is resort to purchasing
new techie gadgets — pads and pods, mostly made in Asia, that
perform various functions we’ve managed to do very nicely without
since the Earth cooled. They’ll mostly wind up unused on the coffee
table or in a desk drawer anyway. Or, in the case of those thingies
people hold in their palms and stare at and poke for hours instead
of interacting with other people, they’ll take over too much of our
lives. (I’m hardly a Luddite, but I don’t keep up with the latest
electronic whizzbangs. I only recently learned that an iPad is not
a feminine hygiene product.)
Nor do we have to buy those easy wrap gift packages of
little containers of cheese and various cured meats that there is
no record of anyone ever eating and that stay in the back of the
fridge until they grow hair. If we wish to keep our friends we
certainly don’t want to buy them a fruit cake. (Perhaps I should
say the fruit cake. Writer Calvin Trillin’s theory, which
makes too much sense to dismiss out of hand, is that there is
really only one fruit cake in America. But people who receive this
one fruit cake as a gift give it away to someone else so quickly
that the rapid movement creates the impression that there are many
fruit cakes out there. I know I’ve received the cake a few times
myself, but have never let the sun set on it.) Bake it and take it
items are way more welcome than temporary possession of
the national fruit cake.
There are plenty of family-run businesses in the
neighborhood of everyone reading this column. Why not help put an
end to these folks’ recession rather than sending more American
money on a not-so-slow boat to China? These local entrepreneurs
will be more than happy to provide gift certificates for your
friends and family for such items as hair cuts, auto detailing or
oil changes, lawn care, carpet cleaning, meals in local
restaurants. (If any of my friends see this, my wife and I like
Thai.) Heck, even the local baby sitter would probably play along.
So would the spa around the corner or the local wine shop. Most
computers could use a tune-up, and there’s probably a nearby geek
who could use the work. And there’s the local florist.
You get the idea. And surely this list could be lengthened
with a little thought. Media coverage of the Christmas shopping
season is almost as stylized at that of hurricane coverage. (“This
is Nigel Klieglight IV, strapped to a utility pole here in Possum
Butt, North Carolina, where as you can see the wind has really
picked up, which accounts for why my toupee and my makeup have
blown away.”) But most of the Christmas retail coverage has to do
with traffic in department stores, which I hope prosper this year.
If it just has to be a flat screen TV, then it will have to be a
flat screen TV.
But there are plenty of other gift opportunities between
home and the department store. This is not the kind of stimulus
program Barack O’Barnum and his evil sprites are flogging. But it’s
one that would benefit the country in general and our neighbors in
particular a sight more.
So enjoy those Christmas carols, including my favorite,
the one that begins, “Liberals roasting on an open fire.” And have
a blessed, and local, Christmas.
