December and the Christmas season has descended upon us once again with its customary stealth. The supermarkets warned us it was coming by stacking the shelves with selection boxes in late September, which is around the time toy advertisements started to appear on TV.
For the last offering of 2024, we’ll look at the lighter side of Christmas, but for this penultimate issue, we’ll shamelessly dive head-first into the season’s commercialisation and highlight some unusual gifts you might want to buy for the people in your life.
For the tardy masochist, there’s always the Shock Clock. This fiendish device is a wearable alarm clock that sends an electrical biofeedback current into your body when you hit the snooze button. At a little over €143 on Amazon, it’s an expensive way to get out of bed, but the manufacturer assures us that it’s a great way to ‘train’ yourself to get up early without disturbing your sleeping partner.
Wine is often a ‘can’t miss’ gift and for the fellow medical professional, you may want to add the male/female white coat wine cover (pictured). It comes complete with a tiny tie, string of pearls, thermometer, medicine bottle and syringe tucked neatly into the pockets. The manufacturer says “the design is very lovely and exquisite, fitting the identity of doctors”. Flattery will get you everywhere.
Of course, it’s better to buy a gift that you know will be used. Last year, the New York Post conducted a survey of 2,000 adults to highlight the most unwelcome gifts doing the rounds. Seventy-five per cent of the respondents said each year they receive Christmas gifts that they will never use and 21 per cent have even fallen out with a loved one over a gift they gave.
Chances are you will receive a gift you don’t like, but these can always be given a new life by a charity
Some of the most unwelcome gifts included iron supplements, bad romance novels, a car manual, cleaning products, new windscreen wipers, a mousepad, and hankies. Some poor misguided souls even gave weight-loss plans and anti-ageing products to their friends or colleagues as gifts.
Chances are you will receive a gift you don’t like, but these can always be given a new life by a charity. A study of 2,772 adults in the UK conducted for Oxfam last year showed that 57 per cent gave their unpleasant surprises to charity. Soap, bath bombs, candles, jumpers and body sprays were among the least popular gifts. Almost a third (29 per cent) said that each year it was the same person who gave them the present they didn’t want.
As always, diplomacy is key. The same survey showed that 31 per cent just put these gifts out of sight, 14 per cent only take them out when the giver visits, and 6 per cent even hand them back. Forty-nine per cent said they pretended they loved the gift, but 11 per cent actually let the giver know how they felt.
Perhaps honesty is not always the best policy.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.