Unusual birthday gift idea

Survey uncovers unusual holiday gift giving

It's somewhat inevitable at this gift-giving time of the year for our brains to shut down. Nevertheless, it happens. As we scramble to meet the end-of-the-year deadline, the furious activity has the potential to turn us all into scatterbrains. Combined with a credit card, this erratic holiday thinking can lead to disaster.

Especially in the department of gift giving.

As the holidays approach, many professionals are considering gift ideas for their coworkers and business contacts, Tracy Turner, executive director of the marketing staffing firm, The Creative Group, explained. The challenge is finding items that are distinctive yet appropriate for the recipient and the occasion.

Business executives participating in The Creative Group's national gift-giving survey reported such holiday blunders as receiving items ranging from a free camel ride to a six-foot-tall toy bazooka. Other presents topping the survey included a screeching monkey, a dancing statute of Hank Williams Jr., a pair of chattering teeth and a gold tooth, but the list goes on.

Locally, it appears that business gifts stick pretty close to the traditional fruitcake; however, just underneath the surface, area lawyers have exposed some of their most memorable holiday experiences.

It was one of those Secret Santa things with a group of friends, Maia Brodie, St. Louis County Bar Association president, recollected. And I got a guy.

Thinking it would be funny, Brodie bought a gag gift but she said the recipient did not share in her humor.

It was the year they came out with the Elvis cologne, so I got him that, she said. I got a pair of mittens that day, which were really nice, and I still have them. So I felt really bad because this was obviously a piece of junk, even though it was $20-something for the Elvis cologne.

Perhaps Brodie's gift would have worked better for an Elvis fanatic, as The Creative Group recommends adding a personal touch to gifts that relate to a person's interests or hobbies.

The staffing agency also suggests steering clear of gifts with a religious connotation.

Howard Shalowitz, president of the Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis, described his shock of arriving home to find a giant box waiting for him. Upon opening it, Shalowitz discovered an old friend had sent him a gigantic, real Christmas wreath.

I thought I opened my neighbor's mail because Jewish people don't put up Christmas wreaths, he said. I'm a cantor also, so I'm a Jewish clergymen; naturally I wouldn't be putting up a Christmas wreath.

Shalowitz said that he thought maybe they accidentally sent me this one and someone else a box of chocolate dreidels or something for Hanukkah.

Nevertheless, Shalowitz said he was appreciative of the gift and decided to share his present with someone who could use it.

For anybody else, it would have been a really, really nice Christmas present. I mean, it was beautiful, and it smelled great, he said, adding that he ended up recycling the gift after explaining the situation to a colleague.

She kept saying, 'well that's odd, why would somebody send you a Christmas wreath,' he said, retelling the story. But she loved it, and she loved it as a Christmas present, and she loved it as a birthday present. But that, without a doubt, to this day, I can't figure that out. I mean, it's sort of like sending a priest on Easter some matzoh [and saying] 'Happy Passover.' He doesn't celebrate it.

When choosing a gift, The Creative Group asserted the fact that the gift giver must keep in mind its appropriateness as well as its packaging design.

Attorney Mike Gunn pulled out what he considered an odd gift from storage to reminisce on one of the most unusual gifts he received from a client one past Christmas.

I think they just wanted to get rid of it, quite frankly, he said about the large, confused-looking George Washington portrait that never made it to the wall.

Gifts with a creative flair have the potential to be successful, if given correctly, according to The Creative Group. The firm said hand-made gifts that reveal the gift-giver's hidden talents are typically well received.

I did a singing telegram to Luciano Pavarotti around this time, Shalowitz said, explaining his creative gift. I worked for a singing telegram company when I was in college up in Chicago.

It was a welcome, but it was also during the holiday season, he described. It was to the tune of 'Funiculi Funicula.'

In return for his performance, Shalowitz received an autographed picture of himself, dressed in his singing telegram uniform, crooning to Pavarotti.

However, not everybody can go to such creative extremes. In addition to handmade gifts, food items are staples of the holiday season, but bear in mind certain people have special dietary needs.

Missouri Bar President Bill Corrigan said he typically gives the traditional gift of fruit as well as Kringle, an old German pastry popular in Wisconsin, he said.

Jack Stewart, an attorney in Jefferson County, said his firm frequently receives candy and popcorn from its clients.

We always get a bunch of mixed nuts, and we put them in little tins and give them to people, he said.

Stewart added that in donating something for a Christmas auction at the Hillsboro Chamber of Commerce, he once paid for somebody's monthly water bill. Another year, he offered free legal service.

When I didn't have anything to put in, I would put in a card that said, 'this entitles $100 of legal service from any lawyers,' he said, adding a lawyer in town questioned his motives. One of the lawyers in town says, 'well, I looked at that, and I made sure it said any lawyer, that it didn't just say it was you.' But I lived up to it; I think I paid him or somebody $100 for work.

Giving to a charity in the recipient's name is another suggestion The Creative Group proposed as a way to avoid choosing an unusual gift.

My family decided that we didn't need to buy each other gifts again, so we would support a charity, Brodie said. I adopted three of the 100 Neediest Families [highlighted in the St. Louis Post Dispatch]. . . . Each of the family members supported a different charity of their own choosing, and that's what we gave - the gift of giving to other people.

Although her relatives have resumed giving gifts to the children in the family, Brodie said she continues the tradition.

It was great, and since then I still do it every year, she said.

Unlike Brodie's charity-giving tradition, and the traditions of Stewart and Corrigan, which remained year after year because of the positive reaction, attorney Mark Keersemaker has a holiday tradition that originated out of an unexpected experience between his wacky grandmother and his step-father.

She gets everyone to focus on him and he opens [the present], tears off the paper. It's a Tippin's Box, and he's the only one who can see what's inside and just really has no idea what to say, Keersemaker described. She says 'well, I knew you loved pies,' and he picks it out of the box, and it's a wooden pie with the fancy lattice work. It looks like a beautiful pie, but nothing he could take any pleasure from.

So ever since then, my mom displays the cherry wooden pie at Christmas on the hutch, he said, laughing.