You know it must be close to Christmas on account of most of the last-minute male shoppers are crowding around perfume and cosmetic counters holding out their credit cards with a dazed and confused look in their eyes that says to the frazzled sales associates, “I don’t care what it is, please, please, please just pick out something nice for my wife.”
And so the frazzled sales associate obliges by grabbing the most popular (read: most expensive) item with her best Merry Christmas smile frozen permanently on her face as she bravely gazes out over a throng of equally shell-shocked men jabbing each other with their credit cards while jostling for position at the counter.
And the zombified Shopperman takes back his Visa, which by now has been used so many times it flaps in the air like a piece of thin paper, and he bravely summons enough brain cells to remember to ask perhaps the most important question of all: “C-could you gift wrap that?” before he wanders unsteadily off in the general direction of the parking lot overwhelmed by the trauma of Christmas shopping and the heavy strain the spirit of giving brings men of the male gender.
Of course, at this stage many of the ladies of the household have been finished shopping since November, have every gift carefully chosen, purchased and wrapped, have Christmas dinner planned and mostly prepared a week in advance, and still have had time to send out 200 Christmas cards, each with a personalized note.
OK, so maybe not every female is that much of a Superwoman, but compared to their spousal units, boyfriends or companions (not all at once, hopefully) I think it’s safe to say the ladies are superior beings when it comes to the delicate art of managing Christmas.
I mean, what generous, loving male hasn’t, in the most innocent and genuine fashion, given his Better Half a lovely vacuum cleaner, or, even say, a nice wrench set or an expensive chainsaw for Christmas? And then slept on the couch in the basement until well after New Years Day?
It’s universal, isn’t it?
Somewhere in the pages of our own Christmases Past, haven’t each of us experienced a shopping nightmare or two, or have given or received a gift that we will never forget?
I remember the time my Dad and I went into Clowes Jewelry on Ross Street one snowy Dec. 24 because we figured we’d better not wait much longer to get Mom a nice present on account of all the good stuff would soon be gone.
I was about nine or 10 years old and as soon as I saw it, I knew we had to have it for Mom. As I look back now, I realize it was possibly the gaudiest, kitschiest hunk of frou frou ever made — which of course accounted for it being one of the few big ticket items still left in the store.
A golden cherub stood about a metre high (about three feet in those days) holding a large crystal bowel, the whole statue thingy covered from top to bottom in dangling pointy rainbow-reflecting prisms of glass.
It defied description, and in fact I wasn’t even sure what it was for, but I imagined that the bowl at the top of the sparkly statue thingy could be used to maybe collect coins or perhaps nice rocks. Or better yet, it would be perfect for a couple of bushels of assorted hard candies or even chocolates!
My Dad suggested that it was probably meant to hold a plant of some kind and my Mom certainly had a lot of those.
I recall very clearly that we were flabbergasted to discover that this outlandish coin/rock/candy/plant stand had an outrageous price tag of $99!
A lot of moola then and now for a gold-painted baby angel holding a bowl, but the store was closing soon and my Dad was rapidly developing that dazed, confused male shopper look of desperation, and I wasn’t helping by insisting that we just had to get it for Mom, and that it would be the best Christmas ever, and that I would even contribute the savings from my allowance, which, if I recall correctly amounted to about $5.40.
That thing must have weighed nearly 50 pounds (300 kilocycles metric) and I don’t know how we lugged it home and got it secretly into the spare room, but when we wrapped several rolls of colourful Christmas paper around it, I remember it standing there looking a lot like a lumpy fire hydrant covered in red and green paper.
I believe that was the Christmas I got my train set and a Gatling gun on a tripod that fired a whole roll of actual plastic bullets, therefore I was so busy and excited that I almost forgot to watch Mom open the lumpy fire hydrant that Dad had dragged out by the tree after everyone had gone to bed.
Moms are excellent actresses. And my Mom had to pull off an award-winning performance that Christmas as she “Ooo-ed” and “Awww-ed” over the cherub-crystal prism-festooned statue thingy, happily assuring Dad and me and my sister Hedy (who was sitting in stunned silence with her mouth open) that this was the loveliest present she had ever received.
Mom put a plant in it and somehow made it actually look quite lovely after all for years and years, especially when the plant grew enough to cover most of the cherub and the sparkling prisms. Which may have been her intention all along — but she certainly wasn’t going to let on that the 11th-hour Hay-male shoppers had been anything less than thoughtfully brilliant.
So here’s to exhausted, desperate last-minute Christmas shoppers everywhere. No matter how many bottles of perfume, chainsaws or plant stands end up under Christmas trees this year, we should all try to remember that it truly is the thought that counts.
Even if it’s a golden prism-infested cherub holding a crystal bowl. After all, you can always fill it with candies.
Harley Hay is a local freelance writer, award-winning author, filmmaker and musician. His column appears on Saturdays in the Advocate. His books can be found at Chapters, Coles and Sunworks in Red Deer.