17 December 2006
Fascinating Festive Fact #17: Well over three-quarters of all presents received at Christmas are crap
Meg says:
It's not because your family and friends don't like you: it's because Christmas and Crapness go together like the holly and the ivy.
The kind of Christmas crap you may receive this year fall into four distinct categories:
Novelty Crap
This genre of useless things is mostly made of plastic, probably fabricated in South East Asia somewhere, and may well require batteries. It might play music, or spit sparks, or stagger across the table when wound up. It may be oversized, undersized or otherwise comical. It will probably feature vivid coloours, stickers on plastic, and may include some reference to the recipients age/ sexual prowess/ intelligence. It's the kind of thing that is usually associated with Secret Santa schemes in which people who don't know each other very well have to spend a small amount of money on a token gift. In this case, and in fact in the case of most novelty gifts, you'll wish that the giver had just stuck a nominal sum in an envelope instead.
Safe Crap
You know what this stuff is: you've got it every year for the last 20. It includes bath stuff, shaving sets, any overpackaged giftsets you can buy which are a) specifically aimed at Men or Women and b) can be found on the shelves of supermarkets or chemists. Gifts in this genre are what you get the person who has everything. They also work out nicely for people you don't know very well (but should). Warning: giving anything to do with personal hygiene should be reserved for family members.
Celebrity Crap
Includes autobiographies as well as star-endorsed perfume, computer or board games, pepper grinders, lean mean grilling machines, watches and the like. This gift signals that the giver will have spent a lot of money, but will have given you something which is still crap. The fool.
Useful Crap
Tough one, this: it's mainly stuff which is actually useful and therefore quite welcome, but at the same time, you're quite capable of buying yourself. And it's a very fine line indeed. So be careful when choosing to give anything which the recipient might actually use: it may be a good thing, but it might still be a crap present. The key to getting it right is usually a combination of a) quantity b) cost and c) packaging. See: socks, gloves, deodorant, watch batteries, lightbulbs, pasta, sewing thread, pens, razors, nail polish, toilet bleach.