My Christmas Present List for 2012

Christmas is over, as I complete this blog. The leftovers have been eaten. We are back in Thalwil and the Thank You letters and emails must be written.

Talking about Thank You letters and presents, I have starting making my present list for December 2012. I am never one to be unprepared, and for years now, I have made Christmas Lists for myself. I keep the notes under “25^th December” in my diary, in case you want to look.

This probably sounds very selfish. However, when anyone asks the question, “What you do want for Christmas?”, I just get out my list. Easy, innit.

I am doing people a favour with this. I have been told that the most difficult people to buy Christmas presents for, are those who say that they don’t mind what they have. As I don’t want to be difficult, there is no chance of that happening with me. Ask me what I want, and you are likely to get an item, price and location of purchase. Mercenary or what?

I had thought of publishing a Christmas Present list. I could have used Grumpy’s blog for this, but this might have been even more off-putting than usual.

Actually, I don’t suppose for one moment that you would want to buy me a Christmas present. Do people really want to know what you want, or are they just being polite or making conversation? (“Beano or Dandy annual”, has come highly recommended recently.)

I think that there are alternatives. I could use one of the Wedding Lists with John Lewis, Marks and Spencer or Tesco and change “Wedding” to “Christmas” list. (Why do we always say the plural - “Marks and Spencers” or “Tescos”?) The prices will be published, you could sign up for individual presents, and have them delivered to my house. We could have a “Grumpy’s Christmas Present List” at John Lewis or wherever. I can’t believe that this has not been done yet or has it?

My Thank You letters would be automatically generated by the John Lewis, Marks and Spencer(s) or Tesco(s) website. All labour and brain power saving stuff.

There would have to be a list of items that definitely should not be bought, such as handkerchiefs and socks, except for those extremely silly socks which you would never be seen dead in, without the excuse “I got these for Christmas”, as if this explained “Bad Socks”.

(“Grumpy” socks are the exception. These will be accepted gladly and worn on inappropriate occasions).

Do you think that it would be rude to send out reminders to people who fail to give me a present? Should I run a Black List? A sort of “Name and Shame” List.

In case you were wondering about my 2011 Christmas list, anything that was not reserved by another member of the family, I bought for myself on Amazon at a total cost £25.38. I  am very easy to please.

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I cannot let this occasion go by without some comment about Christmas Newsletters. Now, having been a fully paid up member of the “I can’t believe these people who send Christmas Newsletters”, I have switched sides, am a total supporter of the Christmas Newsletter and was the organiser of the “A Short (but getting longer) Christmas Letter from the Swiss Family Hawker”.

As a good Swiss person, I feel that there should be some standardisation of the format in terms of length, content, font type and size, and number of photographs. There is, of course, the question of whether they should be made mandatory. I shall be submitting these ideas to the European Commission, in case they are short of meaningless Directives, naturally using my 2011 Newsletter as the model.

Finally, I should inform you that I am seriously considering the use of e-Christmas-cards. It will save me the effort of printing the labels. This is a bigger problem than you might imagine, as our printer will not pick up the sheets of labels. However, I haven’t yet worked out how you hang e-cards on the wall with the other cards, but I am working on it.