BB guns — yes, these were great fun to receive, but in the age of litigation, don’t tempt fate. These days, you can’t throw a brick without hitting a lawyer. My brother’s best friend from childhood actually did get his eye put out by such a weapon. Notwithstanding all the fun I had with my BB gun, including many spirited battles with friends in the woods, it’s no longer an acceptable Christmas gift.
Anything applicable to its little brother of lesser firepower applies in greater degree to those venerable Christmas rites of passage, receipt of a .22 caliber rifle or .410 shotgun. As recently as thirty years ago, no magazine even remotely connected to outdoor activities, from Boy’s Life to Field and Stream, was without advertisements featuring a youngster in pajamas, the lights of the Christmas tree gleaming off the shiny blue barrel of his new .22 or .410. Of course, back then, an acceptable leisure activity was plinking song birds off of telephone wires (an activity I vehemently objected to, even as a child).
Darts and dart board — anyone who has owned one of these, and I am among that group, learns why this is a bad idea when they remove it from their wall. Even with a backboard, the surrounding wall surface always resembles a picture of the cosmos taken from the Hubble space telescope, with countless tiny pock marks. College students can kiss their damage deposit goodbye the moment a dart board graces their wall. So, unless the recipient has a liquor license, neon signs, and a listing under “taverns”, don’t buy them a dart board.
Anything that takes four D cell batteries. A present, especially a toy, that requires that much power (roughly the amount of electricity consumed at any given time by an entire town), will be too loud, and too expensive to keep in batteries.
Anything alive, unless you would cheerfully adopt it yourself, which may be what you are doing if the recipient doesn’t feed, walk, or give affection to the little rascal. Barnyard residents, such as chicks, ducklings, and goats, are out. Even if they survive neighborhood predators, they usually display all the bonding and intimacy potential of a sofa cushion with claws.
If the animal will be living outside of your household, and thus outside your immediate rescue range, don’t give one as a present unless you won’t object to finding that it met some horrible and speedy demise. The same applies to plants. Don’t give one unless you won’t be disturbed to find it brown and withered within a week. A woman once gave me a beautiful plant as a housewarming gift, saying “a house is not a home without a plant to kill.” What her words turned out to be distressingly prophetic, she was quite upset.
Cut flowers are the exception. They have beauty, an aura of intimacy, and an expected lifespan shorter than a mayfly.
Last but not least, never, never, give a bread making machine. Not that this is a bad present, but to buy one from Williams-Sonoma guarantees that you will be included in the most vicious sort of mailing list, thereafter condemned to receive at least two mail-order catalogs per day for the rest of your life from companies that market household furnishings, clothes, tools, etc. Besides, with all the use, or lack thereof that most bread making machines get, there are less expensive, smaller, and more attractive paperweights.
Start Where You Stand 