Swell Holiday Turning Up the Twinkle

Chapter 1: Gifts The Most Memorable Gifts are Often the Least Practical'Tis better to give than to receive -- except when you spend most of November and December spinning out of control in department stores because you have to get gifts for your brother-in-law's second cousins. The trick is to have as much fun dreaming up, collecting, and wrapping prezzies as the getters have ripping 'em open. But how? By mixing up the store-bought and the homemade, extravagant indulgences and little mementos, gifts planned months in advance and last-minute miracles. By throwing in a few surprises: something to get a laugh, or a token sappy enough it should be wrapped with a box of Kleenex. Just so long as it doesn't feel generic. Add something personal -- even to a gift certificate. There are many ways to make a gift memorable without splurges of time or money. Just please don't be too practical! Did the Three Wise Men bring Mary and Joseph a stroller? HOMEMADE GIFTSIf You Don't Like it, You Can't Return ItFar be it for us to diss the great American consumer spirit. But there can come a soul-deadening moment when you look at all the sweater boxes and pine for a holiday that feels -- how should we say? -- a little less commercial. Put some Laura Ingalls Wilder back into the gift giving. Imagine your cabin is miles from any mall or general store, weeks from the next Pony Express delivery, but you want to come up with something great for Ma and Pa....Going old-school doesn't have to mean making lace tussie-mussies, nutshell dainties, and other dust-collectors for the whatnot that require the kind of time and sewing skills you only have when you spend long winters in a cabin on the prairie. A Swell can fill her stockings with quick and quirky homemade treasures without a glue gun or even any craft skills to speak of, because she is supercrafty. Cover a CarolSign yourself up for your very own, very independent, record label, and record your Top Ten Holiday Hits. All you need is your trusty tape recorder and a holiday songbook. Press Record-a-Carol. When you're ready to take your act big-time, find one of those recording booths where you can make your own CD or hit the big city and set up a recording session. Lots of studios will rent time to amateurs. Bring friends for backup. Stay up late struggling over the playlist to find the right balance of sentimental ballads, carols, and funk: an a cappella rendition of "Silent Night" that will make your mother cry; your harmonica solo of "Good King Wenceslas"; a cover of Adam Sandler's "Chanukah Song"; "Joy to the World," Three Dog Night's "Jeremiah was a bullfrog" version.Holiday Song BookIf your voice makes dogs whimper, and your talents lie more in the mute hobby of fireside scrapbooking, scour the sheet-music store for your family's favorite holiday tunes. Slice them out and mount them in an album. Dress up the cover with a sentimental family photo, or just a title: "Joy to the World and other Cooper Family Classics." And a picture of a bullfrog.Every-Occasion Stationery CollectionKeep an eye out for a pretty box. Could be fancy, a hand-painted Venetian wooden box from the antiques store, or a cool Lucite one from a tag sale. Even a candy box that seemed too good to throw away. Label the top "Sweet Note-things." Make your box an "every-occasion secretary" by filling it with cards of all kinds. Pick them up in souvenir shops, museums, the botanical gardens -- whenever one catches your eye. The more diverse the better. Elegant florals and arty postcards, vintage thank-you notes. Blank cards "monogrammed" with the giftee's initials on top, whipped out with a glitter pen and alphabet stencil. An envelope of stickers? Sure, that iridescent unicorn could go on a letter to your niece!Book on TapeOnly you do the reading.A spy thriller, a Penguin Classic, theRowley, Cynthia is the author of 'Swell Holiday Turning Up the Twinkle', published 2003 under ISBN 9780743482141 and ISBN 074348214X.