Post-Thanksgiving Trauma

     Well, it's the day after Thanksgiving and you know what that means. It means that the Christmas shopping season is finally drawing to a close. I hate to tell you this, but there's not much time left before the Valentine's Day shopping season begins and it will soon be too late to buy your loved ones their Christmas presents. That is, unless you want to buy them heart shaped candy for Christmas. But that wouldn't be very religious of you would it?
      Now don't blame me about this mess if you haven't done your shopping. As you are well aware, the Christmas shopping season traditionally begins on July 5th (at least it has in recent memory) so you've had plenty of time. And I don't want to hear any moaning and groaning about having to do Thanksgiving shopping. That shopping season begins Feb. 15 and runs until June 15, which is, co-incidentallly, the begining of Halloween shopping season. So you really have no excuse not to be caught up with all your holiday gift buying.
      But, of course, you haven't done you Christmas shopping, which is lucky for me, otherwise I wouldn't have anything to write about this week. So (insert deathless pause here) here is what you've all been waiting for I'm sure; the Grumpy Bachelor Christmas gift buying guide.
      Well, it's not so much a guide as it is just a few vague suggestions, for which I disclaim any responsibility. Since you read this column, you are, technically, an adult and every once in a while you just have to suck it up and act like one. What this means is that you are on your own as far as deciding to follow any of my suggestions.

The Grumpy Bachelor Guide to Christmas Shopping

     The wonderful thing about Christmas is that it gives us a chance, at the end of the year, to take stock of our lives and how we are enriched by our loved ones (and family members). It is a time to reflect on how much we love these people, how our lives are made better by their being there for us and how we can let them know just how much they mean to us by putting a monetary value on our feelings.
      Experience tells me that this is the only thing relatives understand. OK let's skip ahead a little and assume that you have taken inventory of your friends and relatives and decided how much they deserve to have spent on them. For the sake of example let's say you have a total of five friends and relatives. ( I know that you, like most people have more than five relatives and, in fact, have just this day gotten Christams cards from about 15, 14 of whom you have never heard of before. But I want to keep this example simple as a service to my readers.)
      Where was I? Oh yes. You have five friends and relatives and have decided that you want to spend a total of $15 for all of them. That works out to, um let's see $3 apiece. But that is an average. I am willing to bet that you like some of them more (or conversely, hate some of them less). So, again, for the sake of argument, you decide that 2 of the 5 deserve to have $5 spent on them. That leaves $5 to be split up three ways. Three into 5 does not go evenly so you will have to round down and that comes to $1 for each less desirable person on your list. Now you are spending a total of $13 out of a budgeted $15. This leaves you $2 to the good, all because you decided to buy gifts for some people you aren't really crazy about.
      Now isn't that what Christmas is all about? Either that or I have misunderstood something here.

NEXT WEEK: The Grumpy Bachelor gets a lump of coal right between the eyes.

George Breithaupt is a photographer, copy editor and weakly columnist for a local newspaper that is trying like the dickens to keep it's real name from being used in any of these columns.