There are many things I wait until the last possible minute to do: I pick up the mail only when the box is about to explode, save laundry until I’m absolutely out of socks and underwear, and start papers the night before they’re due (two nights, if they’re research papers). You might be surprised to hear that there’s one sizable task I don’t put off: Christmas shopping.

Few things are as satisfying as finding a great gift for someone you know. There are so many ways to do it horribly, puzzlingly wrong that it feels awesome to get it right. The only hitch is that politeness sometimes makes it hard to tell. It’s usually obvious if you hit it dead-on, but a pleasant “Thanks! It’s great!” could mean anything from “It’s great!” to “There’s a receipt in here, right?”

I find it fantastically difficult to come up with a good gift idea for anyone off the top of my head, especially when pressed for time, so I choose to sit back and let the ideas drift in of their own accord. The day after Christmas N, I’ll open a small mental folder labeled “Mom, Christmas N+1″ and wait for possible gifts to appear over the course of the next year. When I notice a particularly juicy one, I’ll either buy it on the spot and stash it away, or dump it into the folder, to be recalled in December.

This “plan” usually works pretty well, which is remarkable considering how damn lazy it is. Seriously—I had half of this year’s Christmas shopping done by August.

Some people are easy to buy for—my mom, for instance. Her tastes are well-defined (chocolate, Sean Connery, the color pink) so it’s easy to spot things that I *know* she’ll like. I already have Christmas, Mother’s Day, and birthday presents for my mom stashed away. No joke.

I only get into trouble when I haven’t come up with anything good by December, or when something changes to make my planned gift somehow less appropriate—the giftee’s tastes change, our relationship changes, or they up and get whatever I was going to give them. I’ve had to junk at least a couple fabulous ideas this year already.

Okay, I’m off to brainstorm for the two names on my list (both male) that still have big red question marks next to them. Boys are tough to buy for, y’all.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 14th, 2006 at 3:27 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.