Christmas in November?

When I was growing up, we heard about and discussed in our family an Uncle and Aunt of ours who supposedly gave each other gift certificates for Christmas. As kids we just couldn't imagine something like that. It seemed so crass and commercial and non-romantic. In the extended family Christmas gift pool, they would give to our family about every 6 or 7 years. We learned really quickly to tell them what we would really like unless we wanted a box of old books or something just as creative.

Now that I'm older (older even than the aunt & uncle were at that time) I can appreciate their position. I am the world's worst reader of hints and gift suggestions. That's probably related to my talent as the worst hint dropper. I can't imagine anyone being able to tell my "Isn't that an interesting item" meaning I find the concept and/or engineering unique or clever from my "Isn't that an interesting item" meaning oh, please, please, please get me that for Christmas so I won't feel guilty buying it for myself.

So Carolyn and I go one better than the gift certificate route. We buy our own gifts . That insures that we get the kind, color, size, and model of whatever it was we were dying to get on Christmas morning. Not only that but I'm bound to actually be in a position of buying something I want when I see it whereas she would have to make another trip and hope that what I saw was still there.

There are two problems to this method. First (and I hesitate to say how often this happens) we buy it, put it away until Christmas and then either forget where it is hidden or forget that we bought it. The second problem is buying it and then wanting to use it right away.

We just purchased an i-Pod for each other. Not wanting to "waste" a full month of warranty before even finding out whether or not they work, we turned them on and connected them in turn to our computer, loaded some tunes and pictures, and played the tunes back and looked at the pictures. They truly are amazing machines. Then, reluctantly, we put them away. There's a real problem in seeing, handling, & playing with your Christmas gift 4 weeks before Christmas.