The Rage Diaries

Help me shop

So here is the deal: I do not send out Christmas cards because it is so stressful to write them out and get them in the mail while I'm also trying to do the shopping and the cooking and the decorating and the making of warm f***ing holiday memories, goddamn it.

However, the guilt always gets me, because I happen to know many many people who do not have my holiday issues and are, in fact, overflowing with peace, fellowship, time-management skills and good penmanship -- and they all send me Christmas cards. So I found a perfect solution with the January cards. You see a sample at left. And honestly, it was nice to sort of drag out the holiday goodwill with the card-sending in January.

However, when I wrote KnockKnock to ask when they'd be releasing the January 2008 cards, they told me they're not producing any this year. This baffles me, because in an interview a few years ago, KnockKnock founder Jen Bilik had said of the card, "It continues to be one of our best-selling holiday cards, printed and reprinted every holiday season. The retailers like it because it extends the card season by a month into the new year." Last year, the 2007 cards sold out pretty quickly at places like Uncommon Goods -- but I guess things have changed in the intervening months.

I am now in the market for a substitute card. So far, the stuff I've seen is very positive and upbeat and sweet and absolutely guaranteed to make any recipients wonder if I've been replaced by a pod person. So I am flinging the question out to y'all: do you know any offbeat, yet not hideously tacky, stationers who carry New Year's cards? Where are your favorite places to look for paper goods online?

Re-gifting: Yay or Nea?

A little mini-trend I've noticed: stories saying it's okay to save money and reduce the clutter in your house by regifting.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the term: "regifting" is when you take a gift you received but didn't like, rewrap it, and pass it on on to someone else. Proponents cite its convenience; economists thrill to its efficiency:

Six in 10 people between the ages of 25 and 34 report they have regifted before and plan to regift in the future, according to the Tassimo survey. Nearly three-quarters say they regifted because they felt the item was perfect for the new recipient. Three in 10 say they lacked money to buy a gift or simply ran out of time. The survey, conducted in early August, interviewed 1,505 U.S. adults ages 25 to 55.

Regifting serves to make gift-giving -- a highly inefficient custom, economists say -- a little more economical. "People choose the wrong things for gifts. From the recipient standpoint, gift-giving is a terrible way to allocate resources," says Joel Waldfogel, chairman of the Business and Public Policy Department at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.

-- "Regifting: a Scrooge Move No More," WSJ, Dec 19, 06

Personal-finance types laud it as a smart budget-saving move:

The fact is more people are finding regifting an acceptable practice, according to a survey by Money Management International, a consumer credit counseling agency ... and only a third do it to save money ...

"When done carefully, regifting, combined with other saving strategies, can help keep spending under control," said Cate Williams, vice president of financial literacy for MMI.

-- "The Do's and Don'ts of Regifting," WaPo, Dec 17, 06

And apparently, regifting is no longer considered rude: according to "As Regifting Catches On, Some New Websites Make It Easier to Do" (Marketwatch, Jan 3, 07). Emily Post now has rules online for how to do it.

What was interesting about all three articles was how they all, at one point, cited surveys that found more people re-gifting. It's sort of the "everyone's doing it, so it's now okay!" premise. What's also interesting: not a whole lot of feedback from the recipients of regifts.

What do y'all think of regifting? Do you have rules for when it's okay? Have you been on the other end of regifting?

Have a blue Christmas

Somber Blue Christmas services are being held at many churches around the country this year, in recognition of what psychologists have long known: that the contrived good cheer of the holiday season can actually make some people who are dealing with heartbreak feel worse. The Blue Christmas services confront feelings of grief and loss head-on.

"Holidays in our culture are often about families, and families are not always happy institutions," said O'Dwyer Randall, who once worked as a grief counselor. "I think that particularly if you're facing a death or a divorce, the 'empty chair syndrome' becomes very real at this time of year."

-- "Somber Services Mark 'Blue Christmas,'" AP, Dec 20, 06

This is, I think, a wonderful example of ministering to the needs of the people.

75% of the way there

Three more holiday-themed TV movies assessed for your viewing pleasure over at Teevee. We reveal -- to the surprise of nobody -- that we absolutely adore Dolly Parton and think she can do no wrong; she is the lotus that blooms out of the mud, pure and pristine and gleaming while everything else wallows in filth around her.

Fortunately for all of you who enjoy a merciless fragging, we also deliver one of those to another movie.

Don't forget you can also check out our parts I and II of this series.

Procrastinators, rejoice!

I don't know how it is in your area, but around here, the Marines have already collected all the Toys for Tots barrels. If you're smacking your forehead in consternation, stop it. You'll leave a mark. Also, you won't have a hand free to navigate MyTwoFrontTeeth, a site that matches up kids with their wishlist toys courtesy of your small ($30 and under) donations. There are approximately 1000 kids' wishes to fulfill.

The Bay Area-based organization is taking donations up to December 24. What they do:

We research community organizations that work with underprivileged children and carefully choose our partners.  We then give toy catalogs (20 toys under  $25, selected by our staff)  to these organizations to distribute among the children they support. On each profile card, the children tell us about themselves (name, age, favorite food, etc.), draw a picture on the back, and choose one toy as their holiday wish.

After collecting the cards, we scan the kids' drawings and enter their information into an online profile for each child.  Sponsors from around the community can then visit MyTwoFrontTeeth.org, browse through all of the children's profiles, and sponsor a child (or two!) by completing checkout. The toys are bulk-purchased through our distributors and are shipped to the community organizations where they are wrapped and given to the children a few days before the holidays.

Surfing through the kids to sponsor is just ... oh, man, when a kid says his favorite animal is a monkey and he loves singing carols during the holidays, it is hard not to give in and get him that set of bongos he wants.

Best of all, you can give gifts in someone else's name. So if you have a few hard-to-shop-for types on your list, just pop on over to MyTwoFrontTeeth and sponsor a few gifts. It's a win-win-win situation!

And the madness continues ...

Part II of our holiday insanity is up at Teevee. Now featuring slams at Judd Nelson, indictments of supermodels and more Santa spawn than you can shake a candy cane at!

What have I done?

Okay, because I didn't have enough going on with the usual seasonal schmazz, I decided it would be fun if Phil and I watched 12 terrible holiday-themed TV movies, then wrote a four-part series about the experience.

Part One, in which we cover A Carol Christmas, Single Santa Seeks Mrs. Claus and Meet the Santas, is now up at Teevee.

I bet y'all can't wait for the installments with Verne Troyer, Dolly Parton and Paula DeVicq, can you?

P.S. In a separate dispatch for Television Without Pity, Phil's recapped The Christmas Shoes.

Where have all the shoppers gone?

My biggest mistake in my years of covering holiday sales: not drafting a bingo card with phrases like "shoppers and retailers are engaging in a game of chicken" and "after a strong start ..." and "look for a last-minute push." Think of how lively reporting would have been with me shouting, "Bingo!" in a source's ear.

In a seasonally-typical story, the AP reported on Dec 17 that:

"It has been a bit sluggish in the month. Everyone is counting on the last days, but I am still optimistic," said Michael P. Niemira, chief economist at the International Council of Shopping Centers. "It will get down to the wire."

Kim Roffey, a strategist at Kurt Salmon Associates, agreed, noting with Christmas falling on a Monday, shoppers know they have a full weekend before the holiday. Merchants, however, still were hoping that shoppers would be a bit more motivated to buy as Hanukkah occurred earlier this year than last year.

"The general consumer consensus is that they have time," Roffey said. "That's great for consumers, but nerve-racking for retailers."

-- "Stores Count on Holiday Procrastinators"

The Un-gift Guide

You have to work really hard to give someone a rotten gift. It takes a lot of effort to turn into the kind of person who is willing to spend money (or time) on something expressly intended to make the recipient feel bad about themselves; it takes even more effort to channel that malicious energy into the kind of gift-giving selection that's guaranteed to give you the sweet, mood-killing moment you so crave.

That said, it is all too easy for the rest of us -- we earnest, sincere people striving to transmute our sentiments into material expression -- to really boff it, even with the best of intentions. Our decision-making skills get strained as we struggle to filter out the input from dozens of catalogs, website gift-giving guides and shiny, confusing retail store displays. Abundance addles the judgment.

With this in mind, let me offer you the un-gift guide. I will not be providing links to special goods at great prices. I will be laying down my rules for avoiding the kind of present that puts your recipient in an awkward position.

The line that sent me over the edge

We are hosting Thanksgiving dinner this year for the first time. Sure, we have cooked dinner before in other people's kitchens, but this is the year we are also on the hook for the general state of said kitchen, the appearance of the table, and all that.

I suspect the only reason I'm not sunk deep into a pop-eyed, shrill-voiced conniption is because I'm a big, fat Thanksgiving sap who generally thinks that the main point to the holiday is not to erect a tablescape* that can shock and awe, or to cook a meal that will have foodies weeping in desolate envy, but to create a little eddy in the daily currents where we can float with people we love. So long as the day doesn't end in the E.R., it's all good. And if the food is fantastic ... well, then it's an even better day, right?

(At left: an element of my "tablescape." I decided to let my magpie tendencies run wild.)

Although my family Thanksgivings tend to be less Norman Rockwell and more Kaufman & Hart -- sliding occasionally into slapstick territory, depending on how many people brought their pets and/or children and/or dearly beloved yet senescent relations -- I have been at other people's family Thanksgiving where the main dish was resentment with a side of awkward. I get that not all of us are blessed with a ginormous Catholic family and a genetic predisposition toward trying to make everyone else choke on their cranberries.

So I'm sympathetic to the people who are faced with family conundrums at Thanksgiving ("Pass a Drumstick, and an Olive Branch," NYT, Nov 22, 06). But surely, there is no good excuse for this:

A good host must also handle with aplomb the guests who drift away from the table before dinner is over. Younger children can be dismissed to watch a special DVD or do an art project, but adults tempted away by the football game “must know they have to sit-stay,” Ms. Bass said. “Once they go out for a cigarette or they start texting, it’s all over.”

Emphasis mine, because my first impulse is to deliver the pop-eyed, shrill-voiced question: Who thinks it's okay to send text messages at the dinner table? In my book, that is as egregious as answering a phone during dinner.

Surely the people who are responsible for human health and safety are off being responsible at their police and fire stations, their hospitals, their missile command sites. They're not sitting in dining rooms around the country, frantically texting away, thanking God that a fire broke out before their mom could sigh and make pointed comments about their sister the hedge fund manager. Right? So who's left to do the texting?