Added: 01/09/2007 |
The Challenge of Finding Christmas Gifts for MenSince I did not have any brothers, I did not have much experience with the purchasing of Christmas gifts for men. As the mother of two sons, that lack of experience might have created difficulties. However, that has not been the case. The father of those two boys is from Iran. Like me, he follows the teachings of the Baha'i Faith. As a result, I do not face the challenges that once confronted my mother.
It seldom helped to examine the Christmas gifts for men displayed in stores, in magazines and on the television. Discounting the few suggestions for cheap Christmas presents, those advertisements offered little guidance. Thirty five years ago, my father had no need for any of the items usually advertised as being great Christmas gifts for men.
My father did not smoke. My father did not devote long hours to working on his car, or to the performance of any other “shop” activity. My father dressed very conservatively, so one hesitated to buy him any slightly unusual piece of clothing.
My father did like to spend his free time working in the yard of our home. He prided himself on having a well-kept lawn with well-trimmed bushes and finely-contoured gardens. I clearly recall the gift that I got for him one Christmas. It was not an item then mentioned in ads as being one of the popular Christmas gifts for men.
Some people might think that my gift that year came from the aisle with the cheap Christmas presents. However, that was not the case. What I gave my father that year was of a high quality, although it was not an especially expensive gift.
One year I bought my father a pair of garden gloves. He wore those gloves often, and he wore them even before he got outside in the yard. I am sure that no commercial featuring Christmas gifts for men will have a scene such as we had in our home on one Christmas morning. The morning when my father got his garden gloves, he put them on while he still sat on the living room sofa.
Because that Christmas came and went well before the arrival of the sort of games that men enjoy today, my father did not wear those gloves while playing a video or computer game. He did wear those gloves white enjoying the gift that he got from my mother.
My mother, who had been as challenged as me to select from the advertised Christmas gifts for men, had given my father a book. She had found a book that she knew would offer valuable information to a man who directed a team of salesmen for a manufacturers’ representative.
The year that I bought my father those garden gloves; my mother gave my father a book about the former CEO at General Motors. That Christmas day, Pennsylvania got mountains of snow. My father wore his gloves while he shoveled the snow, and then he relaxed with his new book.
Although I gave my father many Christmas gifts, I recall distinctly only one other gift that my father opened on Christmas Day. That was a recording by Dizzy Gillespie. As a writer, I have used that gift to gain for my father mention on something he did not live to see.
Because I gave that recording to my father, I included his college name in an article that I put on the Internet. In fact, I still do not understand why my father was nicknamed “Bunny.” Yet the clever person who gave him that name provided me with the ideal lead for the article that I wanted to write.
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