Why are Christmas gifts always inappropriate?

"I have to buy something! For an aunt!" But however many malls you run around - wondering if a six-pack of Hansa and a mop could ever be appropriate presents - there is, in actual fact, not a single gift that is suitable to give to any adult, ever. Nothing. Not. A. Thing. All presents for anyone over the age of Spider Man or Barbie - and I say this with almost three decades of consideration informing my prognosis - are inappropriate, without exception. Consider:

*The T-shirt.* Generally seen as an absolute staple present, particularly for men - given that you can’t give them what they really want for Christmas (cows, a wife who never nags, *umdada*, six-pack abs, a 1963 Ferrari that roars like a lion but runs at the speed of light). There can scarcely be a boyfriend, an uncle, father or grandfather alive who will not be receiving a light, floppy box of gift-wrapped cotton this festive season. But can you really give a T-shirt as a gift? Should you? Consider the function of T-shirts in an individual’s life. They are items that wear out terribly easily. They encounter many climatic incidents - what with a shameful life filled with permanent streams of beer, dust and often earth during drunken tip-overs, with hardly ever seeing the door of the church. And because of this life of almost unparalleled garment-activity, a T-shirt wears out in three weeks – tops.

Now, given that gifts are supposed to be treasured for life, can people then really take it upon themselves to select a garment that – if it is to preserve its ‘gift’ status - will become practically unusable to the giftee?

*Chocolates.* At almost any other time of the year an extravagant box of chocolates is as welcome as a reverent, yet desperate, kiss on the lips from Angelina Jolie. But that’s all the other times of the year. Christmas is different - a time when one is eating so much chocolate that it becomes like a dietary mainstay. No sane person would buy a loved one Christmas chocolates.

In fact; food of any kind. Salmon? Biscuits? PS? Cake? As a gift? Are you insane? The average weight-gain over Christmas is 10kg. This is not a time people need more food being brought into their homes. Their houses are full of food. There’s more food in their houses than there is air. People are having to eat their way through three Streetwise Twos just to get to their front door. Their sofas are covered in cake, sausages and potato chips. The youngest child was last sighted trapped under a ‘party size’ bag of Nik Naks the size of a double duvet. Put more food into these chow-swamped houses? You might as well give a basin of water to a drowning man.

*Perfume.* Another staple but, dear Lord, WHY? The very first thing one learns about perfume - well, maybe the third thing, after "Don’t spray it into your face. Or, however desperate you are, don’t ‘dash’ with it" - is that it reacts differently according to the wearer’s skin. What smells like the epitome of sexiness on you might smell like cat’s poo on me.

And vice versa.

Who, then, given these proven scientific facts, would dare to second-guess the chemical scent experiment – ‘scentsperiment’ - that is squirting Chanel No. 5 onto Auntie? No. Perfume, like whether to attend an ex’s wedding and where you stand vis-à-vis Gadaffi’s massacre, must be a personal decision.

*A Card.* This sends the message: "I am still stuck in 1966 when it wasn’t proven that deforestation causes more than half the overall carbon whatever and I’d rather let the world perish decades earlier than to not give you this piece of paper with words I could have easily texted, cheaper even, although I am certain you will chuck it in the bin within a week".

*‘Unusual’ affectionate gestures by lovers.* Hang on. Are you suggesting that a kiss on the forehead or a bone-crushing hug on Christmas morning is commensurate - in gift-worth - to a trip to New York for a week or a pretty leather-bound study Bible? These things are a woman’s basic human rights!

These are the stuff of simple day-to-day-courtesy! I cannot believe you are fobbing me off with this! Dear Lord! I shudder what I’ll get on my birthday. A chance to do the dishes perhaps? Bean stew? You have RUINED Christmas. You have ruined my life. I’M DOOMED! Join me next week as I lay out for you the appropriate Christmas presents.

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