Taking a Number When It’s the Thought That Counts

I like buying Christmas presents, but then I’m an incredibly generous and thoughtful person, so what would you expect?

Unfortunately, I don’t like to wait for gift wrap at the malls, and don’t have even the minimum scissoring skills needed for personal wrapping, so I usually don’t buy anyone anything and instead spend all my money on myself.

Just kidding. Actually, Christmas wouldn’t be the same without tromping around, preferably on Christmas Eve, trying to match the right gift with the right person.

That’s why I wonder if MainPlace/Santa Ana is performing the service it thinks it is with the mall’s idea for a gift registry. Set up for the first time this year, the idea borrows from the bridal registry concept--except that instead of signing up for expensive crystal, you make a list of Christmas presents you want. Then, when your many friends show up at the mall, they merely call up your name on a computer and see all the things you want for Christmas.

Clearly, the idea is to make sure you get what you ask for.

Do we really need this?

When the registry program was announced last month, a mall spokeswoman said the system will make holiday shopping more convenient and foolproof.

That’s exactly the problem. Holiday shopping isn’t supposed to be convenient and foolproof. It’s supposed to involve sacrifice and thought--the cornerstones of gift-giving.

Aren’t you losing some of the spirit of Christmas when your friend or little lovey-pie opens the present you got him or her and says, “Oh, you got me No. 6. How sweet.”

To which you reply, “Numbers 1 through 5 were taken. I was thinking of getting you No. 9 but changed my mind at the last minute.”

Just to reinforce my thesis, I asked a few friends about their favorite Christmas presents from years past. They all mentioned gifts that had been unexpected or involved special thought.

My friend Tim said: “I think my favorite was an obscure record album. Long out of print, it was one my parents had and lost. I really liked it as a child, and a friend spent some time looking and found perhaps the last copy in existence in an old Hollywood record shop.”

Now, that’s a Christmas present.

Needless to say, buying presents on your own involves some risk that they will not be fully appreciated. But there’s nothing wrong with that; it becomes part of Christmas lore.

Over the years, I’ve bought my parents a waffle iron, electric can opener and a fairly expensive 35-millimeter camera, among other things. To my knowledge, they’ve never made waffles, they still use the hand-held opener and my dad still takes pictures with a camera that I think Mathew Brady may have used to photograph Lincoln.

Just to even things out, I never attached the shower massage head they gave me in 1980.

But bum gifts make the good ones all the better. My parents were visiting me at Christmas several years ago and were lamenting that it would be the first one without my younger brother, then in his mid-20s. He had moved out of their hometown earlier that year and couldn’t afford to come for the holidays.

As a surprise, though, little old me had paid his plane fare, and he and I cooked up a scheme whereupon he would knock on my door on Christmas Eve, and I’d tell Mom it was a package she had to sign for.

Well, let’s just say that when Mom saw her little Johnny on the doorstep on Christmas Eve, she forgave me for the legacy of waffle irons and can openers.

We still talk about that Christmas. I can’t imagine a family sitting around and recalling fond memories of Christmas presents that they suggested someone buy for them.

That’s why I hope this registry idea doesn’t spread. I’m sure MainPlace is well-intentioned, but we’re already too disengaged from each other. Christmas shopping wasn’t meant to be done by computer. It’s meant to be done by trial and error.

A final example: During one of my college years, my parents were having a tough time financially. They told us that there wouldn’t be presents that year.

But on Christmas Eve, they handed me a gift-wrapped box, saying apologetically that it would be my only present. It was a box of chocolate-covered cherries, which probably cost about $1.50 in those days.

I promptly started crying.

But the beauty of that Christmas is that every year for the last 20 or so since, including all the years I’ve been away from home, I can always count on getting a rectangular parcel in the mail.

And let me tell you, those cherries taste better and better every year.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.