Moose in the Kitchen

Christmas shopping can be challenging when most people on your list don’t hanker for material things. I do not understand this mentality, the one that says, “I don’t really see the need for cashmere sweaters, diamonds or ponies.” This type of thinking renders me speechless. But I wasn’t going to get you cashmere or diamonds anyway, so it’s all good.

I like to give books. It remains to be seen if anyone on my list likes getting books, but who’s pulling out the credit card here – you or me? That’s what I thought. If I can’t pick it off a shelf full of dead trees, you’re not getting it. Passing over the problems inherent in buying people lots of books they may never read, plus all those trees you’re killing just to give someone a really thick coaster, something about handing over a stack of text on Christmas morning just screams spinster aunt. And not the fun spinster aunt, the one who flashes people at the beach and feeds you cake for dinner; I mean the one who wears a girdle and whacks your elbows with her spoon when you put them on the table during dinner. That spinster aunt.

Spoon-wielding spinster aunt is not a look that works for me. Plus, I don’t like girdles.

So what to get the parents who don’t go for stuff and the people who already have two of everything, including a diamond-covered cashmere pony?

Why, you get them a water buffalo, of course.

I can see what you’re thinking. One, that I’m cruel to tease you with such a fabulous gift that can’t possibly exist in the real world and two, that if I’m worried about where people are going to put the excess books, I should be really worried about the excess water buffalos with horns the size of motorcycle handlebars. Allow me to reassure you that no large, smelly buffalos will be delivered to the door on Christmas Eve. Instead, you give the water buffalo to someone who knows how to use it, someone who would be overjoyed to have a water buffalo land on their front step.

That someone would not be me. Or probably you. That’s why it goes elsewhere.

Heifer International operates on the idea that if you give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Give him a couple of bunnies and those bunnies will multiply like the horny little rabbits they are, so stew for everyone! Animals can provide a sustainable form of food and income for third world families. I am very much in favor of helping people help themselves, even if this makes me a hypocrite, as my fondest wish is to languish in Marie Antoinette’s cake- and Manolo-filled boudoir while being fanned with peacock feathers. But if your soul doesn’t thrill at the sight of a small child snuggling a piglet to his shrunken stomach, with bacon lust in his tear-filled eyes, then you’re probably a career politician.

Check out Heifer’s gift catalog for all manner of tasty livestock. (Also: trees.)

Flock of chicks: $20.

Sense of well-being gained from buying your brother-in-law a llama for Christmas: priceless.