Thought goes a long way for holiday shopping ideas

Holiday shopping season has arrived. Some people will relish these next few weeks of gift-buying joy. They will savor the each moment, humming in sync to department store Christmas tunes, cheerily checking off all the items on their lists.

Others won’t be so enthusiastic. For them, gift shopping will induce a state of near-manic indecision. They will vacillate until the last possible moment when time leaves no options and, holloweyed and weary, they buy one of the following items: a candle, a sweater, or—well no, that’s about it. A candle or a sweater.

Count me among the latter. I will squander untold hours trudging through stores and scrolling through thousands of items online, growing ever more desperate as I try to find “The Answer.”

The Answer, of course, is to The Question: “What should I buy my mother/father/sister/ brother/niece/nephew/etc?” The Question grows more confounding each year, as none of these people need anything. What’s more, every mall and shopping center and the entirety of the internet are brimming floor to ceiling, door to door, page to page with all the wrong answers.

As I see it, the duty of the holiday shopper is to sift through those wrong answers and, like a gold prospector in a particularly unproductive stream, find that one sparkling nugget concealed in the dirt.

Sometimes everything seems to sparkle. Other times, nothing even shimmers. This is ever my plight as I set out to find The Answer.

A complicating factor is my memories of holidays past. So many times I thought I’d found The Answer, only to realize on Christmas morning that, when the gift was unwrapped and presented, it was in fact, The Wrong Answer. A crumbling illusion. A shiny piece of fool’s gold.

Among the gifts I have given that have proven to be a miscalculation are:

• An expensive handmade felted pillow that appeared smallish and trite when it was pulled from the gift bag.

• A fuchsia-colored sweater—

so striking on the mannequin—that transformed into a screaming pink atrocity under the Christmas tree and blared brighter than our neighbor’s houseful of blinking lights.

• A charming porcelain doll who, I hadn’t noticed, had rather creepy eyes and two tiny, predatorial front teeth.

• A tote bag. I should have known better. A tote bag is never the right answer.

• A kitchen gadget for making pancakes. I’m not sure what I was thinking. You don’t need a gadget to make pancakes, you just need a pan, hence the name.

Equally discouraging are the number of items I have received that have proven to be, well, the wrong answer. These include:

• Loose leaf tea. I’m flattered that people think I’m ambitious enough to get out the tea, put it in a strainer, pour hot water over it and let it steep. I’m just gonna put a tea bag in a mug of water and microwave it.

• A book they think I should read. I have shelves of these. All unread.

• A waffle maker. That just makes me feel guilty. I’m not making waffles. If somebody in my family wants waffles, I will take them to breakfast.

• A tartan plaid blouse. It’s still on the hanger.

• Christmas-themed mugs and towels. I end up using these all year and feeling bad about myself for not being better organized. • A $25 gift card to a high-end boutique. There was literally nothing in the store under $50 other than a pair of flamingothemed socks.

The list of ill-conceived gifts is endless. That’s a problem both for the giver and the receiver. So this holiday season I’m going to take a deep breath as I enter each store, begin humming along to the Christmas tunes, and head straight for the candles and sweaters. I think that’s The Answer. As long as I avoid fuchsia and tartan plaid, of course.

Happy shopping, folks!