Presents good and bad

I WAS READING IN the paper the other day where a woman hit her husband over the head with a bathroom mat made of cork. He’d given it to her as a Christmas present when what she’d wanted was a night away in a five-star hotel.

It makes you wonder if there should be a “suitable gift” clause in these pre-nuptial agreements some people have nowadays. Though had there been one, my own marriage would have fallen at the first fence. Take the year of the biscuit tin. Yep, a biscuit tin, but not any old tin. This one had a high-tech device in the lid which kept the biscuits from drying out: strawberry fields and crisp ginger snaps forever.

But, you know, it was Christmas, with all the complaints of the season and so forth, so I cried: “Darling, just what I wanted.” And then, a month later, when I went to settle the tab at the local corner shop – you could do that in those days – I found myself paying for my own Christmas present; it had been put on the bill.

Writer Christine Dwyer Hickey had a similar experience when what she calls her newish husband arrived home late on Christmas Eve having taken in a few hostelries on the way. He had spent his month’s income plus his Christmas bonus (in the pre-90 per cent tax days) and blown what was left on a pair of plus-fours. If you’ve seen Ms Dwyer Hickey on the dustcover of one of her books, you’ll know that she is a woman defined by a red rose behind her ear and a decolletage as warm and welcoming as the Grand Canyon. Plus-Fours Woman she is not. (They’re still married, by the way.)

Disconcertingly, when I started to investigate the minefield that is present-giving, I found my own family experiences a dangerously fertile area. Not for the first time, I was reminded of the present I gave my daughter Freya one Christmas when she was 14. Hoping for a bit of diaphanous flimsy from Zandra Rhodes, what she got was a purple dressing-gown that I wouldn’t be seen dead in myself. “Made of candlewick,” she elucidated, only this week, the salt in the wound as painful as it is each time the issue comes up, which is quite frequently.

I blame those catalogues where you pick out something in July, pay the woman who comes to the door each week and, with luck, finish paying for it the week before Christmas. Nowadays, we cut out the middle woman and just have debt collectors knocking at the door in January.

There was also the memorable Christmas when my sister, moved by an uncharacteristic urge to tidy up, gathered together all the torn wrapping paper and threw it on the fire, and with it some €200 of Christmas gift money.

Radio producer Margaret Roche spits when she hears the word voucher: “Someone gave us a voucher one Christmas for a night in a smart hotel. The owner came round to chat graciously to all the diners but when she came to our table, she said ‘Oh, you’re the voucher people aren’t you’ and passed on without another word.”

Musician Fiachra Trench and his chanteuse wife Carmel McCreagh were delighted when they were presented with a lovely jar of chutney. Just the thing to have with the left-over stuffing and reheated Brussels sprouts on Stephen’s Day. Until, on closer examination, they noticed that the jar was the very same one they had themselves given to the obviously forgetful donors the previous year. What on earth did they do with it? “We ate it,” said Carmel. “It had matured beautifully in the meantime.” There’s style.

This year my daughter in Antigua asked for a tool box, a wire stripper and a thing like a medieval cosh. “This one’s a beaut,” said the man in the hardware store as he added the eight-in-one wrench. Requests take away the surprise element though, which is half the fun. My cousin gave her partner a very special CD for Christmas and was amply rewarded with amorous hugs. The following year she had another run at the CD idea, but no joy this time, nothing that might remotely resemble a hug. A wintry silence in fact. Why? “Thanks,” said her partner wielding the offending CD like a dagger, “but you gave me this one last year. Remember?”

If you’re aged just nine though, as Eve is, the chances of being disappointed are few and far between. “Last year, I had a Nintendo. This year, I’m getting a DSI with a bigger screen.” She knows she’s getting it because she has emailed Santa and she’s already tracking him on northpole.com.

Blaithnaid Deeny, volunteering in faraway Macedonia, contacted me to say that on the whole, her Christmas presents have always been welcome. “Apart from that one time” – and Facebook falters for a nano second – “when I got a six-pack of pink panties and my sister got a six-pack of blue ones. Oh, and a friend I’ve just asked says his worst present, sort of, was a pair of white socks.” There’s only one sort of person who gives panties for Christmas and that’s mothers. Yes, we are programmed to keep our daughters stocked up in panties. We can’t help it. It’s a gene thing.

No panties this year, though. Staying with family as honoured guest, I am taking my hosts to Doughty Street, in London, where Charles Dickens had a house. There we will have a real Victorian Christmas with mulled wine and mince pies and then home to open the presents. And what surprises await us? Lavender soap anyone? Nivea for men? Souvenir tea-towel from Temple Bar? Oireachtas Calendar 2010?