PUBLISHED IN THE HERALD DECEMBER 4
Thinking of giving a gift voucher to someone this Christmas? A raft of new rules has just been made law, protecting the recipient from sharp practice.
Expiry dates are extended to at least five years from date of purchase; there’s no longer a limit on how many vouchers can be used in one transaction; anyone can use the voucher, not just the person named on it.
This is all good, I think any reasonable person would agree; vouchers seem another form of legal tender to me, and there’s no statute of limitations on pulling out that fiver mouldering in a dank corner of your wallet for the last decade.
That said, I wonder if a voucher is a bit of a cop-out as a present? It’s almost as if you’re saying, I couldn’t really think of anything to get you, so here – buy something for yourself. Saves me the bother.
We might as well throw a fifty in the recipient’s general direction, which automatically reminds me of that wedding scene in Goodfellas where ostentatiously respectful wise-guys line up to hand Henry Hill envelopes stuffed with cash.
I guess it’s not the only classic gifting booboo, though. Many of us have, for instance, bought a Christmas jumper for someone – generally with a picture on the front of a drunken Rudolph wearing sunglasses and grinning sleazily, or some-such nonsense – which are unwearable, by law, after midnight on December 25th.
In fact most gifts are fraught with some element of danger. You can’t buy someone a book, CD or DVD unless it’s something you very obviously don’t want to read, listen to or watch yourself. Otherwise they’ll assume you purchased it for yourself, in a “killing two birds with one stone” type situation.
On the other hand, getting something only they are interested in could result in the horrors of your home being filled with the moaning sound of Hozier on Christmas Day, or the receiver insisting you sit down while they read out passages from some horrendous new book about Kim Kar-krash-ian. It’s the ultimate festive Catch-22.
Maybe you’re thinking of buying someone a bottle of expensive wine? They might get squiffy and confess that they’ve always secretly hated you, and by the way that haircut makes you look like a shopping-centre security guard who got fired for drinking on the job and leering at teenagers.
A trip to a fancy spa hotel for some pampering? They might drown in the seaweed baths, or come home determined to change career to “hot-stone therapist”. A trip abroad? They’ll think you’re trying to get rid of them.
Clothes? Bound to be something they hate and probably won’t fit right. Tickets to some upcoming event? They’ll assume you consider them to be an uncultured oik who needs to be re-educated. Classes in something? They’ll assume you find them boring.
I’ve also discovered, to great personal cost, that the following simply “don’t cut it” as acceptable gifts: footwear, novelty slippers, Nightmare on Elm Street box-set, Freddie Krueger hat and stripy jumper, Kelly Brook calendar, carton of cigarettes (especially if they don’t smoke), “Santa’s sexy little elf” costume and a free haircut at Ray-Zerzzzz, “Tallaght’s skin-headiest barber”.
At this point, the normal human being will be looking around for a rock, in order to enact a “killing one person with one large stone” type situation.
And fellas, don’t even think about jewellery or lingerie for that special lady. If it’s a ring you have in mind, the shop will want to know her finger size. And they won’t accept, “Uh – kind of chubby? Like, not total sausages, but she’ll never be a professional pianist, put it like that.”
You can’t ask her, that’d ruin the surprise. So you end up inventing some spurious reason for measuring her ring finger, involving a convoluted lie about a new government think-tank survey analysing increases or decreases across a random section of the population, 1950-2020.
Meanwhile lingerie is a complete minefield. Get something too sexy and your girl might think you’re unsubtly suggesting that she is some kind of common trollop; or worse, you think becoming some kind of common trollop is a viable career option for her in these uncertain economic climes.
However, get something not sexy enough and she’ll suspect that you find her unattractive in some way, and want her to cover up in the bra and knickers equivalent of a burqa. Plus you’ve probably got the size wrong there too.
And forget about perfume. Men always have a crap nose for perfumes. We think something is sexy and classy, women think it stinks like a third-rate bordello.
The only safe option, ultimately, is to get the person something funny and silly as a stocking filler – I find that a novelty cigarette lighter in the shape of Gerry Adams, where the flame shoots out his terrifying, bearded mouth, is a sure-fire winner – and then pretend that the “real gift” must have been delayed in the post.
This is pretty plausible, actually, as the mail system always goes bonkers around Christmas time. Of course, by about April she’ll probably be wondering how it’s possible for the package to still be delayed. But that’s a problem for another day. Or year.
Darragh McManus, author and journalist 
Leave a Reply