How to Avoid Giving Duplicate Gifts

Clip Job: an excerpt every day from the Voice archives.

December 26, 1956, Vol. II, No. 9

[Note: our copy of this issue is very damaged, and few stories are complete.]

Shopping the Village

By Carol Janeway

One Christmas I gave as a present to a young man about town a ceramic-handled bottle opener. He thanked me prettily, and then proceeded to point out that it was the fourth bottle opener I had given him. With this horrid example in mind I then started to keep an elaborate "gift list" to prevent such awkward duplications. Needless to say, it became rather tiresome, so I finally hit on the solution of giving the same thing to everyone. In 1945 all my happy friends received a doorknob, 1946 was paperweight year, and so on.

[Each weekday morning, we post an excerpt from another issue of the Voice, going in order from our oldest archives. Visit our Clip Job archive page to see excerpts back to 1956.]