Letter: Christmas presents

To the editor:
I often hear people complaining about Christmas gifts they receive — ties they never wear, hand-knit sweaters that don’t fit or are awful in design, another pair of slippers they have to “ooh” over and then stuff in the closet along with last year’s, a fruitcake they’ll eventually throw away, or any number of other gifts they have to pretend they like.
I’ve had my share of these kinds of gifts. I had an aunt who insisted on giving me a heavily scented cologne set every year. You know the kind, boxed with powder and other overwhelming scented items. This kept up even after I gently told her I had allergies and asthma and couldn’t wear any kind of perfume. Somehow, the message never registered and every year there was the same reeking box of items. I couldn’t even stand to drive home with it in the car! We had to lock it in the trunk. The local thrift shop always got these sets year after year and for all I know it was the very same set!
We had friends who shipped a cheesecake to us each year even after I explained I am lactose intolerant and therefore couldn’t eat it. They started sending boxes of cheese instead, which of course, I couldn’t eat, either. What is that line about hearing but not listening?
But as I reflect on Christmas presents throughout the years I think I have a couple that can top anyone else’s strange, odd, unusual, or outright bizarre Christmas gifts.
Imagine my surprise when I opened a package from a friend and found a stuffed toy lop-eared white rabbit with a giant pink sparkly Easter egg in its paws and a large fluffy tail. I still can’t fathom what she was thinking. First, it was Christmas, not Easter, and while Bugs Bunny is my favorite cartoon character (which shows my age I know), it would be a major stretch of anyone’s imagination to connect Bugs with the lop-eared Easter rabbit, not to mention the pink egg with sparkles.
I wrote a thank you, of course, but I’m still shaking my head over that one. Watch for the rabbit at a thrift shop near you.
My parents always complained my husband and I were hard to buy for so, one year they gave us something they knew we didn’t have. We were handed an envelope and when we opened it there was the deed to our own very own plot in the Dover Cemetery. I have to admit I was speechless for just a short time. But they were absolutely right. We definitely didn’t own our own cemetery plot, but we do now and thankfully we haven’t had to use it yet, and thankfully the gift didn’t include an embalming gift certificate. And, since the plot is next to my parents’ I guess it will serve to keep the family together.
Still, it’s something to keep in mind if you have someone on your list that has everything — it just might be the perfect solution to your gift shopping woes, their own cemetery plot.
I expect to hear from a lot of you about the strangest gift you ever received for Christmas. I sincerely hope you can’t top a cemetery plot or a lop-eared Easter rabbit but if you can you have my sympathy.
Nancy Battick
Dover-Foxcroft

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