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From: inc@fluke.UUCP (Gary Benson)
Newsgroups: net.jokes
Subject: Dave Barry - Simple, Homespun Gifts
Message-ID: <484@tpvax.fluke.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 17-Dec-84 13:08:21 EST
Article-I.D.: tpvax.484
Posted: Mon Dec 17 13:08:21 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 29-Dec-84 22:28:23 EST
Distribution: net
Organization: John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc., Everett, WA
Lines: 93



                        SIMPLE, HOMESPUN GIFTS
        The kind everybody talks about but nobody wants to get

                                                -By Dave Barry

[The Boston Globe, Dec. 22, 1983]


     We're deep into the holiday gift-giving season, as you  can  tell
from  the  fact  that everywhere you look, you see jolly old St. Nick
urging you to purchase things, to the point where you want to slug him
right in his bowl full of jelly.

     No, wait -- this is going to be cheerful. This is  going  to  be
about  how  to  have  an old-fashioned Christmas, like back in the old
days, when people gathered around the open hearth and sang carols  and
coughed  alot,  inasmuch  as  the old open hearth produced very little
heat. In those days, people exchanged simple, humble, homemade gifts,
such as molasses.

     Why not have an old-fashioned  Christmas  for  your  family  this
year?  Just picture the scene in your living room on Christmas morning
as your children open their old-fashioned presents.

     Your 11-year-old son:  "What the heck is this?"

     You:  "A spinning top!  You spin it around, and then eventually it
	   falls down. What fun!  Ha, ha!"

     Your son:  "Is this a joke?  Jason Thompson's parents got  him  a
		 computer  with  two  disk  drives  and  128 kilobytes of
		 random-access memory, and I get this cretin TOP?"

     Your 8-year-old daughter:  "You think that's bad?  Look at this."

     You:  "It's figgy pudding!  What a treat!"

     Your daughter:  "It looks like goat barf."

     There's no reason why you can't extend this old-fashioned  notion
of  giving cheap, homespun things to everybody on your Christmas list,
except your boss and anybody else in a position  to  retaliate.  Here
are some ideas for extremely traditional, old-fashioned gifts that you
can make yourself:

      o  Pine cones  with  red  and  green  sequins  pasted  on  them.
         Actually,   you   don't   have   to   use   pine  cones.  At
         Christmastime,  you  can  paste  red  and  green  sequins  on
         anything -- rocks, celery, old toasters, wadded-up Kleenex --
         and claim it's a decorative gift item.

      o  Fruitcake. You can always tell the Christmas season is  here
         when  you start getting incredibly dense, tinfoil-and-ribbon-
         wrapped lumps in  the  mail.  Fruitcakes  make  ideal  gifts
         because  the  Postal Service has been unable to find a way to
         damage them. They last forever, largely because nobody  ever
         eats  them.  In  fact, many smart people save the fruitcakes
         they receive and send them back to the  original  givers  the
         next  year;  some  fruitcakes have been passed back and forth
         for hundreds of years.
              The easiest way to make a fruitcake is to buy a  darkish
         cake,  then pound some old, hard fruit into it with a mallet.
         Be sure to wear safety glasses.

      o  Yarn knotted together with great effort. People  are  always
         impressed  when  they  get a wad of yarn all knotted together
         because they know that, rather than go out and  spend  money,
         you took the time to knot some yarn together. If your wad is
         8 inches in  diameter  or  less,  you  should  say  it  is  a
         potholder,  a tea cozy, an antimacassar, a tea holder, a book
         warmer, a pot cozy, or a doily. If it is any  larger,  claim
         it's a comforter.

     So there you have  three  easy,  traditional  homespun  Christmas
gifts that cost almost nothing yet are virtually worthless.

     The folks on your gift list are bound to be impressed and will no
doubt  show  their  appreciation  next  year  by sending you something
equally thoughtful, such as a really long newsletter droning on and on
about how well their children are doing in graduate school.


(Ed. note:  An antimacassar is a protective covering for the backs of
chairs and sofas, for them what don't know [as I didn't].)



-- 
Gary Benson ms232e -*- John Fluke Mfg Co -*- Box C9090 -*- Everett WA 98206 USA
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