Make A Statement With Your 2020 Christmas Gifts

Thanksgiving was strange and lonely. Can we possibly have a normal Christmas?

At this point that doesn’t seem likely. We’ll probably be celebrating remotely, shipping gifts to each other and opening them round-robin in a Zoom meeting. What could be more festive than that?

It seems like everyone set up their Christmas trees Thanksgiving weekend. I guess it gives people something to do and look at while stuck at home. We’re getting ours up early, too. We don’t even have a family group photo this year to send out since our kids can’t come home.

There’s good news, of course. We’ve been told that a smorgasbord of vaccines will be available to save us next year. But that doesn’t help much right now. This year we’re doing a lot of Christmas shopping online. But local shopping is very useful for the specific items you can pick up and then be on your way before the virus sees you. There won’t be as much in-store browsing this year.

Hollering a muffled “Happy Holidays!” through a mask to someone at the other end of a store aisle doesn’t have quite the correct ring to it. Even watching the Walton’s struggle through their classic Depression-era Christmas special may not quite put you in the spirit. Times were tough back then but they didn’t have to wear masks.

Maybe this is the year we give the most outrageous gifts ever. So, what would be good gifts to give in a depressing year like this? Well, you could start with festive masks as stocking stuffers. There are so many available that it’s almost become a cottage industry. Remember when you couldn’t buy any? Seems like last year.

Household items are selling well this season since most of us are stuck at home. I wouldn’t have thought that cookware would be popular now. Catherine would not be pleased receiving cookware, regardless of the circumstances. Maybe a robotic vacuum cleaner. It would clean the floors and keep us entertained watching it terrify our cats. We’re at that stage in life where we really don’t need any more stuff that says “garage sale item” all over it. We already have a substantial collection.

Maybe it’s time to get drastic and give gifts that are fun just to watch being opened. Some people exchange the same gifts back and forth each year. It might be an ugly Christmas sweater or a fruitcake. But each year they would try to make it harder to open that anticipated gift. It might start with the boxes-within-boxes trick and progress to being encased in cement. Seems a little drastic but it does make Christmas more interesting.

There are many funny thing we could buy for each other to lighten things up this year. We regularly receive catalogs of T-shirts, sweatshirts, blankets and mugs with humorous phrases on them. I have a drawer full of T-shirts purchased from these places that I don’t dare wear in public.

Popular T-shirts with funny phrases come in all sorts of categories. Here are some I like.

“Why Be Difficult When With A Little Effort You Can Be Impossible?”

“I’m Trying To Be Independent But No One Will Help Me”

“Bureaucracy: Turning Energy Into Solid Waste Since 1789”

“I Was Social Distancing Before It Was Cool”

“I’m Not Crazy; My Mother Had Me Tested.”

“Don’t Piss Off Old People. The Older We Get, The Less ‘Life In Prison’ Is A Deterrent.”

“You Can’t Scare Me. I Have A Daughter.”

“Underestimate Me. That Will Be Fun.”

“I Don’t Snore. I Dream I’m A Motorcycle.”

“Whoever Dies With The Most Toys Wins”

Here are some dealing with the English language:

“I’m Silently Correcting Your Grammar”

“A Semicolon Is Not A Medical Condition”

“Eschew Obfuscation”

“Let’s Eat Grandma. Punctuation Matters.”

“I Hate It When People Don’t Know The Difference Between ‘Your’ and ‘You’re.’ There So Stupid.”

Old age:

“If I’d Known I Was Going To Live This Long, I Would Have Taken Better Care Of Myself”

“The Older I Get, The Better I Was”

“My Passwords Are Protected By Amnesia”

“If I’d Known Grandchildren Were So Much Fun, I Would Have Had Them First”

A engineer:

“If It Isn’t Broken, Take It Apart and Fix It”

The rest of us:

“If It Isn’t Broken, You’re Not Trying Hard Enough”

Other engineer shirts:

“With Enough Thrust, Pigs Fly Just Fine”

“Optimist: The Glass is Half Full; Pessimist: The Glass is Half Empty; Engineer: The Glass Is Twice The Size It Needs To Be”

My current favorite is a T-shirt that says, “I’m The Reason We Can’t Have Nice Things.”

Remember, you can regift any of these.