Judging by Main Avenue shoppers’ anguished faces this week, for many locals, the task of buying presents for impossible-to-buy-for relatives was proving more conceptually insurmountable than a fat Santa sliding down a soot-filled fireplace.
“Doesn’t everyone have a relative who’s impossible to please?” said Orlando Dugi, Santa Fe artist, who was browsing Durango Coffee Co.’s crockery with Ken Williams on Thursday.
“Your mother will pretend she likes it. Then you see it at your brother’s or sister’s house, and you know she hated it,” Williams said.
Dugi said when shopping for the most discerning relatives, it is crucial to identify an eccentricity for which the recipient has a weakness for.
“For instance, his mother loves anything purple,” Dugi said about Williams’ mother.
At There’s No Place Like Home, Terri Hume said her horse, Ferris, was her Christmas conundrum.
“I don’t want to be cliché and get him a big bag of carrots. Last year, I got him leg warmers from this store – they worked. But he’s 2,400 pounds. So you have to be creative because nothing fits,” Hume said.
Though several Durango residents said they were fearful of their pets’ disdain, most said that their gift-giving anxieties centered on perennially underwhelmed blood relations.
Fort Lewis College student Sarah Williams said her sister Rachel, a Hawaii-dwelling 23-year-old, had despised every piece of clothing Williams has given her throughout their long mutual history.
Does her sister simply have bad taste?
“She wears a lot of dresses and long skirts. But last year, I bought her a purse. She hated it. With some people, it’s just so impossible.”
When it comes to buying for infants and children, other Durango residents adopt the same strategy as the Three Kings, who, after all, hedged their gifts of frankincense and myrrh with gold, the biblical equivalent of a gift certificate.
“I just give money,” said Loana Serrano.
But this tactic is effective with only the younger generation.
“Kids don’t expect the gifts to be personal,” she said, whereas one’s elders still expect actual, thoughtfully chosen things.
Serrano and Prezley Shry said when it comes to Christmas shopping, adult men – often, fathers – were their white whales: baffling, evasive and despite a lifetime of study, managing to defy capture year after year.
Serrano said mothers and aunts are manageable – buy them a nice scarf or a pair of earrings, and you’re done.
Shry agreed, citing an Internet meme featuring a woman with words that say, more or less, “Why do you say I’m hard to buy for? You know where the chocolate and liquor stores are.”
But Shry said without exception, dads are “the hardest to buy for. Also, uncles. The issue is that men of a certain age have everything they want. And if they haven’t bought it, then it’s not affordable,” Shry said.
Serrano despaired, saying there is a limit to how many sweaters one father could possibly use.
“At what point do you say, enough is enough with the sweaters? And have you noticed that all adult men only have one interest? Like World War II or hunting. With my dad, it’s cars. But he already has all the car parts he needs,” he said.
Poor Christmas choices can fracture the fondest of families.
Dyan Scott, an accountant, said when it comes to Christmas shopping, she had largely given up.
“I’m over it,” she said. “My family is back east, so you have to have your act together by early November. Then you have to ship everything,” she said.
Scott said she can afford her no-presents Christmas policy thanks to scrupulously selected birthday gifts – aided by gift certificates.
Jesse Kleinschmidt’s Christmas gift advice was simple.
“When in doubt, buy flashlights and headlamps,” he said.
“Adults need flashlights and headlamps – and kids love them. One year, I got flashlights for 10 kids. They didn’t play with anything else. They just went to the basement and played with the flashlights.”
cmcallister@durangoherald.com
