Heck Of A Guy

If You Haven’t Already Bought It, It’s Too Late

In 2006, I initiated the Christmas No-Buy Zone, disallowing purchases of items for ones own benefit or for the benefit of another individual or group of individuals who could be on the DrHGuy Christmas gift list if said purchases could potentially duplicate, obviate, or otherwise lessen the value of gifts I might or might not bestow in association with the celebration of Christmas or equivalent winter holidays, including but not limited to Chanukah, Kwanzaa, Winter Solstice, Ramadan, Diwali, and Wiccan Yule.¹

For the past two years, I opted for the alternative of simply deferring my Christmas gift purchases until (considerably) after December 25th. Now, however, I have, for reasons unclear to me, reverted to buying and giving gifts in sync with the community of humankind – or at least that portion of humankind that views this time of year as a gifting opportunity.

Consequently, I’ve found it necessary to again invoke these restrictions with updated revisions.

Please be aware that the window for making your preferences and disinclinations for specific gifts or categories of gifts known to me is also now closed; if you couldn’t get the word to me in the first 11 months of the year, well, you just weren’t trying.

Christmas No-Buy Zone Gift-buying Restrictions

Effective Immediately

The following categories of purchases are specifically forbidden and enforcement of these prohibitions will be especially vigorous and the consequences congruently severe:

• Live entertainment and entertainment media: Concert tickets, CDs, MP3s & other sound files, steaming media, books (including hard cover, paperback, books on tape, & e-books), and DVDs (all formats)²
• Electronic equipment³
• Writing materials
• Trinkets, doo-dads, gizmos, gimmicks, & all items typically included in the “novelty” category
• Jewelry
• Edibles⁴
• Potables (potent or otherwise)
• Clothing and clothing accessories

The Exceptions List

To harmonize with the spirit of the season and to prevent the awkwardness caused by last year’s unfortunate hospitalization of my great-grandmother due to her so-called emaciation and dehydration,⁵ I have liberalized the list of exceptions to the no-gifting policy.

The above restrictions notwithstanding, the following purchases are permitted:

• Any of the dark green or yellow vegetables (e.g., beet greens, collard greens, kale, mustard greens, sweet potatoes, winter squash), whether fresh or frozen
• Legumes (other than peanuts)
• Tap water
• Automobiles, motorcycles, private airplanes
• Jewelry with genuine diamonds with total carat weight equal to or greater than 20 carats
• Periodicals to which one  already subscribes
• Eight track tapes⁶
• Medications (except recreational pharmaceuticals)

The Special Case Of Children & Grandchildren

Whereas, it would be a hardship for parents and grandparents to completely forgo the accumulation of gifts to be given to their own youngsters even though I may someday choose to buy presents for those same tykes myself, I have therefore, in a demonstration of Christmas graciousness and generosity that should be an example for people everywhere and may well serve as my Christmas gift to the world, stipulated that parents and grandparents may purchase for their children or grandchildren under the age of eight any two gifts from the following list:

• Any one serving from any one of the following fruit categories: apples (except Honeycrisp⁷ ), oranges,⁸ bananas, kiwis, persimmons, any of the melons (including Casaba, Crenshaw, Musk Net Melon, Crimson, Icebox, Sugar Baby, Yellow, Ecstasy, Sangria, Sharlyn, Sweet Charantais Melon AKA French Charantais Melon, Galia, Honeydew, Wax, Winter, Ogen Melon, Pepino, Derishi Russian Seedless Water Melon, and yes, even Christmas Melon⁹ ), or a child’s handful of strawberries, blueberries, or grapes other than seedless grapes.¹⁰
• A bag of hard candy permanently welded into a single lump
• Any toy retailing for under $0.46
• A bright, shiny, new quarter
• A donation of no more than $1 made in the child’s name to a missionary fund

As always, those who have exercised sufficient forethought to purchase extra provisions for the duration of the No-Buy Zone should be fine. For those less prepared … well, culling the herd, while a tad incongruent with the usual festive spirit of the season, is in its own way a gift to others.

Your cooperation is, as always, appreciated and expected

Enjoy the festivities

DrHGuy

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1. Note that avoiding a specific holiday name by the use of terms such as “holiday,” “Jesus’ birthday,” “that special time of year,” “seasonal festivities,” etc does not relieve one of the obligations of the No-Buy Zone. [↩]
2. Recognizing the importance of entertainment, especially during the holidays, some exceptions are permitted (see “The Exceptions List”) and humming or singing softly to oneself is always acceptable [↩]
3. To simplify potentially ambiguous definitions of “electronic equipment,” I’ve condensed the matter to a single criterion: If a device requires a power source (e.g., electricity – regardless of how it is generated, fuel, solar energy, etc), it falls in the category of “electronic equipment.” [↩]
4. “Edibles” are defined exclusively by intent (i.e., an item is, at least in theory, intended for consumption as food) – regardless of whether the item is or can possibly be eaten (e.g., Fruitcake is designated as an edible) [↩]
5. Although had she hearkened to my warnings to stock up on essential provisions prior to the No-Buy cutoff date, her hospital admission and that three month coma could easily have been avoided. [↩]
6. In some cases, purchases of 78 RPM and 45 RPM recordings may be permitted but these require requests submitted in triplicate at least five working days prior to the intended acquisition [↩]
7. Honeycrisp apples are both too wondrously tasty and too costly for children, who, in any case, need something reserved for adulthood, lest they succumb to anomie consequent to reaching the age of 12 only to realize that the future is a psychologically barren abyss devoid of unfulfilled wishes. [↩]
8. I do feel obligated to remind readers that, despite the obvious temptation to which this listing lends itself, comparing apples and oranges is almost always a mistake [↩]
9. It is, of course, counterintuitive of me to allow Christmas Melons AKA Santa Claus Melons on what it, after all, a Christmas list. It is true that typically a whiff or even a whiff-ette of irony, such as that garnered from banning Christmas Melons from a Christmas list, would be sufficient causation for me to take exactly that action. Perhaps I’m mellowing or perhaps I’m surrendering the opportunity to make manifest this potential instance of whimsical malevolence in exchange for some sort of karmic gratification. Or, perhaps my inner child is just delighted with the thought of some brat somewhere unwrapping a package festooned with satin ribbons and wrapped in brightly colored paper to discover what the good folks at the Texas Cooperative Extension of Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas describe as a melon with a “football shape, weighing upwards of 5 to 8 pounds …. [covered by] yellow to green mottled rinds” and endowed with a taste that is most diplomatically signaled by the omission of this quality from reports such as that found at The Cook’s Thesaurus, which notes that the Christmas Melon is “distinguished mostly by its long shelf life–you can store an uncut Santa Claus melon for several months,” before going on to offer “Substitutes: honeydew (better flavor) OR cantaloupe (better flavor).”
   
   
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10. One has to draw the line somewhere [↩]