Holiday Gift Guide 2018

Holiday Gift Guide

Be local.

Shop local.

DECEMBER 6, 2018

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ULSTER PUBLISHING

color 6, 2018 2 | December Holiday Gift Guide

“She’s the best.

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THE DAY

A WORK IN DEVELOPMENT AT LUMBERYARD

Performers Wendy Whelan and Maya Beiser Choreography Lucinda Childs Words and Music David Lang Scenic design Sara Brown Sound design Dave Cook Projection design Joshua Higgason Lighting design Natasha Katz Costume design Karen Young Creative producer Maya Beiser Managing producer Christina Jensen Production manager Emily McGillicuddy

DECEMBER 7 & 8

December 6, 2018 Holiday Gift Guide

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Holiday shopping for realists Consider giving money and/or soap

by John Burdick

I

n a column that appeared in PSYCHOLOGY TOday online, Neel Burton, M.D. lays out his ten guidelines for emotionally healthy gift-giving.

His cardinal rule is, “Never give money, in whatever shape or form.” Giving money, Burton explains, “basically sends out the message, ‘I couldn’t be bothered to think too much about you, so here you go, please yourself, that’s what you’re worth to me.’”

I couldn’t be bothered to finish his column, so fierce was my objection to it. In the material world, money is the very juice of imagination and desire. There isn’t a sock it won’t buy — literally, not a single one. You won’t find many people unhappy to receive a gift of money. The unsatisfied party in this exchange is always the giver. It is the giver’s need for distinction, empathic connection, and discernment that goes unmet. Money is literally a selfless gift.

Admittedly, cash is a downstream gift — parent to child, boss to worker, spouse to spouse as an unspoken permission to cut loose on something irresponsible, something the giver might normally challenge. So if you can’t afford wad enough to make some real consumer magic happen, reconsider.

If you desire an old-world touch, give crisp cash in large denominations. If you wish to dress the gift in a thin patina of empathy and personalization, give e-currency of some kind, buying power locked in your beloved’s domain of feverish material interest. It’s also a good idea if you want to be damned sure he doesn’t spend it on rent or brake pads.

Many people these days, and around here, are simply weary of playing midwife to the birth of more meaningless material stuff in the world, even responsibly sourced, handmade material shit. If you know your intimates feel much the same, you are a candidate for the charity-in-your name model. Take the good will you have accrued among the people you might reasonably expect to spend on you and make it known you would like those resources redirected to a charity or political action of which you approve. Be a selfless conduit and make the holidays a boom time for good.

Hard to quibble with that, but isn’t the gesture perhaps just another offloading of social responsibility to the lower reaches of the private sector?

Largesse falsely attributed to my name just doesn’t do much for me.

Consider soaps. I’d say most people will be pretty happy this holiday season with the gift of some aromatic soap — nothing too perfumed; something handmade, rustic and local — a real working soap, not a pearly crème heart tied in a ribbon nor a lurid, laser-sculpted flowering cake. Something with an earned, authentic stink, cultured in the old ways, not some psycho-olfactory chemical engineering trick developed in the flavor labs of Edison, New Jersey that may or may not cause attention issues in children.

A nice, artisanal soap with a little abrasive grit in it is going to get used. It’s going to leave a gentle, personalized sting of grapefruit lavender lemon chamomile rosemary sandalwood and cedar across two or three months of real life and routine hygiene. And soap delivers a high-value backend gift, too, synced in reverse to the first blue flowers of spring. It vanishes, shrinks itself back into the void, relieving you of the burden of ownership and leaving only a misty streak of clary sage, half in memory, half in the air.

Where durable goods collect in corners and basements, holding their form long after their function passes, breaking down and leaching poisons into landfills over centuries, or, at best, seeming to be always under foot, soap takes its leave. In

A nice, artisanal soap with a little abrasive grit in it is going to get used.

this age of material glut, accelerated obsolescence, proliferating storage facilities, and the anxiety of stewardship rising in everyman’s junk kingdom, there is beauty and bliss in such withering ephemerality. Soap belongs almost more to the temporal domain than the spatial. A cake of soap is a measure of time smeared with cinnamon.

If you subscribe to the precise agencies of aromatherapy, go ahead and target the soap to its recipient. That’s a part of what giving is about, isn’t it? A presumptuous speculation about someone’s desires and deficiencies, perhaps a bid to move your beloved along a spectrum of growth and change as you envision it, to sell them on your version of themselves? So if ylang ylang or bergamot are thought to, say, enhance a body’s neurological tolerance to stress, disarming defensive reflexes and promoting a cooler, less reactive response to conflict, well, heap that shit on everyone you know, son. But don’t tell them that’s what you’re doing, lest you excite the very hackles you design to soothe! Soap is, if nothing else, subtle and easily strong-armed, like language.

A good artisanal soap sits right at a sweet hinge in the gift-giving curve, a functional need met with a giddily unnecessary twist. The gift of scented soap is also an acquiescence, a capitulation.

Gift-giving, for all we invest in it, is a blunt and imprecise way to say anything meaningful to or about anyone. Sometimes you strike gold with it, but the best you can reliably hope to accomplish with a gift may just be a little gilding of the daily: a good smelly, handmade soap that goes away on its own.

Will they be disappointed? Yes. A mild disappointment is a natural and ritual part of the

Stuff, while cool, promises a gratification that it is incapable of delivering

gift-giving and getting experience, maybe even its point. If you will allow me to be the kind of person who sees divinely authored messages in every accident of physics for just a moment, the lesson coded for us in giving and getting is that the river of commerce — mighty and wide though it may be — is a crude mode of personal expression.

Materiality and the transfer of piles provides at best a clunky language with which to craft a message of love, intimacy, understanding and respect.

Stuff, while cool, promises a gratification that it is incapable of delivering, an interpersonal connection that it may occasion but that it can never directly effect. It is a warm and wistful kind of disappointment, though, when all thoughts have been counted, all indulgences reciprocated, and the bottles cracked. A gift wants nothing more than to find the giddy child within the beat old body. Easier said than done, but the fun is in the trying, and in all the attendant rituals and highs of the season: the stimulation of economies, the nuts made back by artisans in one flush of sales, the margins cleared by corporations and the stockholders appeased, all of us doing our expanding-contracting part in a carbon-based world of energy transfer that goes largely unexplained by its creator.

Give, generously and within your means. Don’t think too hard about it, else every box becomes Pandora’s and every can one of worms.

Give Yourself Or Loved One The Gift Of Sobriety For The Holidays

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6, 2018 4 | December Holiday Gift Guide

Kingston retail renaissance Unique businesses abound in this historic small city

by Lynn Woods

F

rom leather goods, clothing and body-care products to furniture, ceramic ware and herbal elixirs, a booming makers’ community has taken root in the mid-Hudson region. That trend has in turn boosted a retail renaissance in Kingston.

No longer do you have to travel to Hudson to purchase mid-century modern furniture, handcrafted skin creams or that simple designer dress sewn of organic linen. Professionals in the fashion and design worlds are finding a haven in Kingston, where comparably affordable rents are enabling them to open the curated store of their dreams. Existing local retailers too have sensed a tipping point in the city’s long-awaited prosperity, as investors seek commercial properties in the Stockade and the Rondout and developers unveil plans for mixed-used projects.

The downside is that rents are increasing, in some cases dramatically, pricing out some of that creative talent as well as old-time businesses. There’s a sense of a growing divide between the haves and have-nots. Preserving the distinctive characteristics of the working-class city that make it a unique, diverse, community-friendly and affordable place while fostering the creative energies that are strengthening the economy and transforming Kingston into a cultural and retail destination is a tricky balancing act. Some worry that the same forces that chased out the boutique businesses that once made New York City an appealing place to live, work and visit could eventually happen here, with the same unfortunate oversupply of empty storefronts and the replacement of idiosyncratic, one-of-a-kind shops with bland, generic chains.

But for now, Kingston has reached a sweet spot.

The storefronts on Wall, North Front and John streets, which once in the heyday of the 1950s and early 1960s displayed shoes, men’s suits, furniture, and ladies’ dresses were for decades filled with dust. They now entice pedestrians with minimalist, Soho-style clothing, vintage jackets, hand-crafted jewelry and housewares, mid-century modern furniture and art, and all kinds of delicious-smelling stuff, from body creams to hand lotion to hair oil to scented candles.

The stores sell lifestyle, with the clothing, jewelry, housewares and books to match. Paintings, collages, photographs and other artwork by local artists grace many walls, a revolving display that complements the gallery scene in town. Many of the new retailers are committed to the community, hosting events and contributing or participating in local causes, from the YMCA farm initiative to People’s Place.

Despite the cool new stuff, the atmosphere is not snobbish and offputting but warm and welcoming. Add in the city’s growing number of stylish bars and restaurants, cafes, curated wine shops, vinyl purveyors, art stores, and music clubs. Here’s a quick tour of retail shops — with an emphasis on the new — starting in Uptown, with a stop in Midtown, before heading down to the Rondout.

The Stockade The greatest concentration of new and old retailers is in the small grid of streets established when Peter Stuyvesant laid out the Stockade in the 1600s.

Blue Cashew Kitchen Homestead, owned

by J.T. McKay and Sean Nutley, who moved their store from Rhinebeck to 37b North Front Street in fall 2017, has everything you could dream of for the kitchen, dining room, dinner party, cocktail hour, and eating on the go. There are organic cotton hand towels, Bento lunch boxes, cutting boards shaped like a house, a wide array of cutlery, dishware, place mats and napkins, baking paraphernalia, candle sticks, glasses, swizzle sticks.

LYNN WOODS

Inside Blue Cashew Homestead.

In the rear of the deep, narrow space, which is framed by exposed brick walls and whose track lighting system includes some nifty triangular neon lights — the store received national attention this year with an award for retail excellence — is a chic, fully equipped commercial kitchen, where specialty chefs and cooks teach workshops and demonstrations, ranging from Japanese cookery to cocktail appetizers to kids’ gingerbread. The roster of events include demonstrations and book signings by nationally renowned food authors, including on December 9 at 2 p.m. Julia Turshen, author of the bestselling “Feeding the Resistance,” who just published her new cookbook, “Now & Again.” Turshen will do a cookie demonstration, and a percentage of the sales will go to the YMCA farm project.

Next door, at 45 North Front, is Rebecca Peacock, which also opened a year ago. It showcases the delicate silver, gold and diamond jewelry made by the eponymous owner as well as pieces by 25 other jewelers, most of them from the Hudson Valley. Silk cord necklaces hang on the walls, and Peacock also sells silk scarves, geodes (wrapped in a handmade cloth pouch, they make an attractive gift), thick sheepskins tanned and cured from a Hudson Valley farm, soap, naturally dyed wood and cord ornaments, candles and other gift items.

Further up North Front, number 37, is Lovefield Vintage, whose cozy precincts were packed on a recent Saturday afternoon, thanks to the great selection and reasonable prices of vintage shoes, coats, boots, sweaters, trousers and dresses; a sweater or pair of men’s trousers was priced at $50. The store also sells new jewelry and bags.

Across the street, at number 58 North Front, is Nordic-style clothing boutique Anderst, which opened in July; owner Sylvia Grieser, a native of Germany (Anderst is German for “different,” she explained) who recently left the city and moved with her partner to a house in Kerhonkson, sells elegant, eminently wearable designs. I instantly coveted a pair of high-waisted, flared pants in black denim, though at $350 they were beyond my budget.

Grieser’s clothes are an updated version of the “little black dress,” which “you can dress up or down,” said the designer. “It’s designed to be combined. It all has similar fabrication, so you can mix and match.” She also sells clogs, a few vintage pieces, accessories, including hats from Red Hook Sheep Farm, hand-dyed pillows, sculptural wooden bowls, hand-blown glass candlestick holders that resembled Surrealistic melted bottles, and spa products. “Kingston is like the East Village

[used to be], where you had possibilities,” said Grieser, who lived for a time in Italy. “There is such an energy of doing her and so many amazing artists,” several of whom she shows in her store.

Down the block, at 66 North Front, is Kingston Consignments & Antiques Center, which sells a wide array of the old and not-so-old. A second vintage goods store, Vintage Clothing, is located a 231 Fair Street. Several years ago I picked up a veneer pedestal table for $125 here. After I painted it with charcoal-colored chalk paint, it looked like a $1000 item from Restoration Hardware. I love this old-style, no-nonsense thrift store.

At the corner of Fair and John is Petalos. Owner Brian Tymon, who used to be located in a sliver of a store on John Street now occupied by artist Matt Pleva, sells unusual plants such as leucodendron, a plant from South Africa with exotic, pod-

Holiday Gift Guide December 2018 An Ulster Publishing publication

Editorial EDITOR: Geddy Sveikauskas LAYOUT BY Joe Morgan EDITORIAL COORDINATOR: Will Dendis

Ulster Publishing PUBLISHER: Geddy Sveikauskas ADVERTISING DIRECTOR: Genia Wickwire DISPLAY ADS: Lynn Coraza, Pam Courselle,

Pamela Geskie, Elizabeth Jackson, Ralph Longendyke, Sue Rogers, Linda Saccoman PRODUCTION MANAGER: Joe Morgan PRODUCTION: Diane Congello-Brandes, Josh Gilligan, Rick Holland CLASSIFIED ADS: Amy Murphy, Tobi Watson CIRCULATION: Dominic Labate Ulster Publishing’s Holiday Gift Guide is distributed in the company’s five weekly newspapers and separately at select locations, reaching an estimated readership of over 50,000. Its website is www.hudsonvalleyone.com. For more info on upcoming special sections, including how to place an ad, call 845-334-8200, fax 845-334-8202 or email: info@ulsterpublishing.com.

December 6, 2018 Holiday Gift Guide

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6, 2018 6 | December Holiday Gift Guide like flowers, along with a variety of orchids and attractive pots, such as tin-ridged containers and ceramic vases. You can buy an air plant housed in a shell or cacti in a hanging terrarium.

Once Kingston abounded with menswear shops, so Hamilton & Adams, at 32 John, is restoring a tradition. Co-owner Andrew Addotta, who lives with his partner in Accord, formerly worked for DKNY and the Gap in New York City and brings his fashion expertise to the emporium with an Upstate twist. The emphasis is on casual, with a large selection of sweat pants, hoodies, locally printed T-shirts, and denim clothing, along with some unisex items. Soaps, shaving gear, lotions, and even a beard brush are also sold. Addotta said business has been good since the opening last April. His patrons are a mix of locals, tourists and weekenders, many of whom learn about the store through Instagram. It’s open seven days a week.

Next door, at number 34, is OAK 42. Owner and designer Christen Drexler also worked in corporate fashion in the city before opening her boutique clothing store two years ago (she recently quit her job and now works at the store full-time).

She and her husband live in Uptown. The tin ceiling, brick wall (which she actually installed) and West Elm chandelier lend a rough elegance. Many of Drexler’s pants, dresses, tops and other items sell for less than $100. She also sells clothing by two other designers as well as bags, mugs and candles.

Flora Beauty Wellness and Apothecary, number 36, completes the retail cluster on John.

It specializes in organic, ethically sourced beauty products. Owner Jeannette Bower, who with her husband formerly ran a hair salon in the city, makes many of the perfumes and hair and body oils herself, branding her line 58Flora. She also sells baskets, whimsical ceramic trays, baskets, throws, crystals and bunches of sage and fragrant woods, which when burned are designed to scent and purify the air.

Opened in early spring, the store features a small salon space in the back and offers haircuts, holistic facials, brow treatments, waxing, massage, acupuncture, and other services by appointment. Diane Avitable travels up from Brooklyn once a month to perform “browsers” ($35) and facials, priced from $75 to $150. She also offers her services at Hops Petunia, the floral store in the Rondout, which is mentioned below.

“Up here you can collaborate with like-minded people,” Avitable said. “We don’t cannibalize each other’s business.” She added that “most of my clients are transplants from the city who can make the time for a treatment and don’t mind paying for it.”

Therapeutic massages, facials and other spa treatments are a specialty at Birch Body Care, a full-service salon at 73 Crown Street.

Theresa & Co., at 303 Wall, has been a solid presence in Uptown, selling quality women’s and children’s clothing and jewelry and other accessories.

Exit 19, 309 Wall Street, is chockablock with

DION OGUST

Stan Zaborski of Zaborski Emporium. gorgeous, one-a-kind gift items or objects for the home, including brightly colored and gorgeously patterned coasters from Lebanon ($8 each), whimsical deer heads and bird houses designed in Italy, crafted from recycled MDF in Germany and colored with non-toxic dyes (starting at $55), illuminated globes, and adorable toy fabric Maileg mice dolls, charmingly dressed for camping or the circus.

Bop to Tottom, at the corner of Wall and North Front streets, is an Uptown institution and a whimsical emporium of gifts, jewelry, bags, gloves, hats, scarves and games. Owner Karen Clark Adin makes it a point to stock the fun, the fashionable and the funky at a price point that pleases a wide range of shoppers.

You have no doubt admired the collection of brightly lit lamps and colorful 1950s art pieces at Stuff, located at 1 Main St., through the corner building’s expansive store windows while stalled in bottleneck traffic. The building used to sport a vintage blue ceramic “Corsets” sign, a rather mysterious anachronism that always fascinated me and prompted pity for my grandmothers, who surely must have shopped for one. The emporium of mid-century modern furniture was formerly located in Rosendale. Co-owner Monik Geisel moved it here because “I prefer to support Kingston. It’s a little busier.” The Kingston-born Geisel said her retail prices are reasonable: an “iconic lamp” just sold for $500, which she said would have gone for $1200 in Hudson.

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More quality antiques and furniture can be found downtown, in the Rondout. Milne Antiques & Design jumpstarted the retail resurgence of the neighborhood when it opened at 81 Broadway over a decade ago. Browsing the capacious warehouse-like space uncovers all sorts of rare novelties, ranging from American primitives to Deco furniture. The store has an extensive collection of stone and concrete decorative garden containers and ornaments and displays paintings

by Kingston-based artist Joe Concra. Owner Rebecca Milne can also have customized dining ta-

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bles, countertops, coffee tables, shelving units and other pieces fabricated by the store.

Exit 19 owners Jamie Niblock and John Krenek just relocated another store they own, Spruce Design & Decor, from Rhinebeck to Union Street, just off Broadway. Spruce has a broad selection of fine, mostly mid-century modern furniture, including such unique items as a Haywood Wakefield dressing table, complete with round mirror and upholstered stool, a brutalist sideboard in dark wood with two double mirrors, and a Brown Jordan set of outdoor tables and chair, in pale, streamlined wood. The store is open Saturdays and Sundays from 11 to 5.

A neighborhood institution is Antiques on the Hill, which represents numerous dealers and has been located down the street, at 41 Broadway, for two decades. It was destined to close due to a rent increase by the new owner of the building but instead negotiated a two-year lease and so will continue to offer an intriguing and affordable mix of furniture, books, clothing, jewelry, lamps and the like.

For a claw-footed tub, pedestal sink, architectural fragment, such as a column, stained-glass window, or set of Victorian doors — basically vintage anything, including door hardware, shower fixtures, dressers, glassware, and even a wicker coffin — Zaborski Emporium is the place. It’s located in Midtown, in a factory building at 27 Hoffman Street and supplies film and theatrical companies. Owner Stanley Zaborski will help you navigate amid the labyrinth of stacked stuff and rescue you if you get lost.

Zephyr, which features owner Caitlin Millard’s clothing designs along with CP Shades, Matt Ny, and a couple of other brands, opened a year ago at 35 Broadway as the studio and sister location to her store in Rhinebeck. Millard designs and sews her clothes in the back, which makes it feel like a French atelier. Her clothes are made of silk, wood, linen, and other natural fabrics, and she can customize the fabrics, necklines, and sleeves and other elements of her designs for clients. A simple dress in silk, cut on the bias, sells for $165 to $285.

Longtime Rondout resident Next Boutique, overlooking Rondout Creek a couple of blocks away at 17 West Strand, has long attracted a following for its selection of casual clothing as well as evening wear (which currently includes sequined skirts and pants) and accessories.

Jay Teske Leather Co., at 25 Broadway, started out making customized Vespa seats but now makes a variety of sturdy leather goods, including trays, wallets, bags, briefcases and even a bicycle bottle holder (his wares are sold not only at his shop and studio, but also at Hamilton & Adams).

Next door, at 25b, is South Manor, a tiny stationery shop with a writing table, complete with velvet-upholstered stools, for writing postcards. The

color December 6, 2018 Holiday Gift Guide

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color 6, 2018 8 | December Holiday Gift Guide owner specializes in paper objects, including old books, wrapping paper, journals, cards and other tactile items.

Last year, the floral shop Hops Petunia opened a second, larger space in a building located behind a courtyard next to its storefront at 73 Broadway, from which it sells an array of fascinating gift

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items, including colored baskets directly sourced from Ghana, ceramics, books, throws, pillows, skin care products, candles, and dried wreaths.

Owner Mary McGuire spent time in Japan, which may partly explain her exquisite design sense; many of the items are reasonably priced.

Next door, in the same building — both stores are situated in historic, late nineteenth-century light-filled storefronts with tin ceilings and high ceilings — Scott Neild has made a success of Clove & Creek, which at this time of year sells a variety of cozy, snuggly items, such as wool slippers, throws, hats, and gloves with deer-leather palms, made by the Newbury Knitting Company, located near Albany. A selection of charming, amateur paintings from the 1940s and 1950s were displayed on the exposed brick wall, and the atmosphere is Catskills chic. (Neild lives around the corner and helped organize this year’s Sinterklaas festival.)

Shoppers now have a reason to cross Broadway, which the blandness of the 1980s townhouses lining the east side of the street never encouraged.

Jewelry designer Morgan Mikula has set up a studio and shop, called Facets of Earth, at 22 Broadway in an atrium-like space that is unexpectedly spectacular. Gestural abstract paintings

by Keith Kimmel adorn the high walls, and collages fashioned from postcards by Carole Kunstadt hang below, at eye level. Mikula’s husband, Brian, who works as a shipwright at the nearby Riverport Wooden Boat School, fashioned the wooden cases that beautifully display Mikula’s jewelry

along with pieces by many other women designers. The store also sells fragrances, naturally dyed silk scarves, fabulous gem-studded trays by two sisters, and other items crafted by local artisans.

A “consultation wet bar” in a loft space atop a tall staircase is currently in the works. The couple, originally from Pittsburgh, recently relocated to Kingston from the city.

If you’re downtown on a Saturday, be sure to check out the art exhibits at The Storefront Gallery and Arts Society of Kingston on lower Broadway. The Hudson River Maritime Museum, open year-round, has a gift shop selling books on local history. Flowers by Maria, at 90 Abeel Street, sells a variety of very fresh flowers from a stunning, high-ceilinged brick-walled store located on the first floor of a restored vintage firehouse, where owner Maria Dijk also lives.

On your way back uptown, stop into Art Bar, 674 Broadway, whose well-attended openings and musical and performance events are a spark of life in Midtown. Recently opened at 26 Downs Street, just off Broadway, is Outdated Lite, a satellite location of the popular Uptown café and antiques emporium Outdated (314 Wall). Like its mother store, the tiny café, located in a nook of an industrial building with distressed walls, sells a collection of vintage ceiling lights, signs, cards, and vintage dishware. It’s open Monday through Friday only.

Outdated isn’t the only place where you can combine noshing with shopping. Rough Draft Bar & Books at 82 John Street is a café/bar and bookstore that’s become a favorite place to meet

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friends or get some work done on your laptop.

It’s located in one of Kingston’s eighteenth-century stone houses, and the ceiling of wooden beams and logs adds to the convivial feeling. You can find numerous recent titles as well as the Kingston High School Arts & Literacy Magazine.

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December 6, 2018 Holiday Gift Guide

| 11

Ephemeral gifts In a stuff-filled world, you can give consumable things or services that won’t turn into clutter

by Violet Snow

T

he problem with gifts is that most of us already have way too much stuff. The odds are that the gift you give is not going to be something that the recipient really, really wants. Nevertheless, they won’t want to insult you by throwing or giving away your carefully selected present. They will feel obligated to give it space in their house until the statute of limitations has passed, and you have forgotten you gave it to them. Even then, if it’s not recyclable, they are going to feel guilty tossing it in a landfill, or they are going to continue to store it, feeling a twinge of involuntary resentment towards you each time it surfaces from wherever they have stashed it.

Is that the result you want from your generous urge to give this person a gift?

There is a way around this problem. And I don’t mean asking them what they want for Christmas, although in some cases that’s not a bad idea. But surprise is part of the ideal gift-giving scenario, and what if you can’t afford to buy what they want? I’m not talking about gift certificates to stores. Sure, that increases the probability that the recipient will like their present, but it still involves a material object that will eventually turn into clutter.

I’m talking about ephemeral gifts — those that are consumed, leaving no trace behind to occupy space, and those that are experiential. The following suggestions may stimulate your own gift-giving ideas.

Food and drink It helps to know what your recipient likes to eat or drink, especially if you want your gift to be personalized. If you have more sophisticated culinary skills than I do, you could cook their favorite dish or your own exotic specialty. Be cautious about giving food that needs refrigeration, though, unless you’re going straight from your house to theirs. Also, you will have to store the food in your own fridge until the two of you get together, which could result in its being eaten by someone else. (Put a warning note on it if you’re going that route.)

Another option, a bit less personal but often appreciated, is to buy treats from those companies that specialize in holiday food presents, usually involving nuts, jam, cookies, fruit, and/or fruitcakes. My sister-in-law sends us Florida oranges and grapefruit every Christmas, and only one or two of them rot in the post office before we get there to pick them up. They are quite luscious.

If your recipient likes sweets, you can go with cookies, a pie, or chocolate. Savory options include breads, pickles, kimchi and the like.

Many a recipient will appreciate wine or a bottle of elegant liquor — for example, amaretto, absinthe or a high-end scotch. Hudson Valley distilleries and vineyards manufacture assorted fancy alcohols. You could even go with six-pack of craft beer, especially if it comes from a local brewery.

For the teetotaler, consider sparkling cider or a festive juice like pineapple-coconut.

Education Acquiring a new skill or honing an existing talent can be a source of great pleasure. Look around at the experts in your community and see if you might both support their work and give a gift of learning.

Art lessons are available in the form of a course at an art school or a private session with one of the local artists who have experience teaching. An hour of drawing or painting under the eye of a sensitive teacher can be calming and all-absorbing. If your recipient has artistic ambitions, a lesson may be a jumpstarter or a source of new inspiration.

Who knows where a basic class in guitar or ukulele or piano or drums might lead? Anyone who likes to sing can benefit from a voice lesson, whether they sing on a stage, in church, or in the shower.

If your recipient is fond of horses, a riding lesson will provide exercise and the excitement of bonding with a handsome animal. Some stables have indoor rings for winter riding, and some offer trail rides in the warmer seasons.

There are plenty of other activities your recipient might like to try with the gift of a lesson or two: martial arts, tai chi, yoga, meditation, dance, sewing, writing, photography. The possibilities are virtually endless.

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Donations Those with humanitarian impulses might donate money in their name to a non-profit organization.

It’s appealing to assign the funds to a concrete result, as when a group uses your money to buy a goat or flock of chickens to support villagers in developing countries. Other NGOs provide funds to help rural women startup businesses. Or in these tumultuous political times, your recipient might be gratified by assistance to a national organization fighting for the environment or civil rights. Just make sure the two of you have shared values.

A day together at a spa or recreation center, for instance, could be great fun. Swim in the pool, work out in the weight room, and then unwind in the sauna.

Massage can be both health-inducing and pleasurable. A good massage therapist can induce deep relaxation while addressing tight muscles.

Modalities include shiatsu, Swedish, acupressure, Feldenkrais, reflexology, and related methods such as reiki and craniosacral therapy.

An hour in a flotation tank is meant to relieve stress. In silent darkness, one floats in body-temperature water, the lack of sensory stimulation altering the brain chemistry. Your recipient will either go into profound relaxation or come out energized.

Other ideas include tickets to a play or concert or sports event, a hike with a wilderness guide, or a weekend retreat at a monastery. Think of your recipient’s tastes and yearnings, and you will be probably able to find an experience that brings pleasure and doesn’t add to the material possessions in their crowded closets.

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6, 2018 12 | December Holiday Gift Guide

The shopping’s always better on the other side of the river A confessed Rhinebecker provides a fairminded perspective

by Jennifer Brizzi

W

hen it comes to holiday shopping, the east and west sides of the Hudson are not mirror images. They offer different bounty for different types of shoppers, with different tastes and different kinds of giftee lists.

Both sides have a few indie toy stores, lots and lots of antique shops and plenty of shop-portunities of all stripes, from huge malls to quaint boutiques. But the demographics and character of each side mean there are some differences, both subtle and not-so, that lure clientele from one side of the river to the other to shop.

I admit a Rhinebeck-centric bias, as a years-long resident. Although there is some great stuff to be found on the other side of the bridge, I can do most of my shopping within a five-mile radius of where I live. Often, I can do 99 percent of my holiday shopping with one or two trips to our delightful Oblong Books.

While the Hudson Valley has its share of bookstores big and small, there is something very special about Oblong. It’s my happy place.

Or one of them, anyway. Another is Warren Kitchen and Cutlery, with many excellent choices for any giftees who like to cook, eat or entertain. Paper Trail is another great stop for a huge variety of giftables. I don’t know of any shopping more entertaining than at A.L.

Luigi’s

Italian Specialties

Stickle, an oldy-time five-and-dime with all those little household necessities and toys, plus the Knitting Garage in the back and a toy museum on the upper shelves. Winter Sun Summer Moon is another spot full of beautiful things, from bodycare items to pillows to jewelry.

Your chances of finding uniquely beautiful items for the people on your list are much greater in the mom-and-pop shops of our towns and villages than at big-box stores and malls full of chain stores. The best shopping is enjoyable, not a hassle. You should get from shop to shop with a pleasant stroll around a lovely hamlet. To me Rhinebeck is all that.

That said, the best gifts are the ones you’d like

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to keep for yourself, and my preference is for the exotic and the unique. My favored aesthetic often takes the form of items from around the world, and the west side of the river delivers, especially fun, funky Woodstock. If there are any offbeat individuals on your list, Woodstock is the place to shop.

Nearby Saugerties is another great village for wandering. I am especially fond of Saugerties. It reminds me of the town I grew up in. It seems to have the nicest, friendliest people (plus a great bookstore, many shops and antique shops and good eating when your energy flags).

I haven’t spent much time in Catskill, but it’s said to be a great place to find many art galleries.

Some call it Hudson’s overflow.

Kingston has no dearth of great shopping. and I’m not talking about the shrinking Hudson Valley Mall. The uptown Stockade District is not a village but part of a city. It manages to retain a village-like feel, and makes for some great walking and shopping.

Check out Bop to Tottom, with lots of fun, supercool gift ideas.

Kingston has attracted some people fleeing from New York City, so more shops and cafes catering to that clientele have opened as of late, as well.

New Paltz shops have a hint of Woodstock’s hippie vibe mixed with a healthy dose of college town. Again, it’s a great town for a long walk.

If I wanted to, which I don’t, holiday-shop at a ginormous multi-level mall or a gargantuan outlet center, I could find those on DION OGUST the other side of the river as well, in the form of the Palisades Mall or Woodbury Commons. We have nothing like that on my side of the river. But if I ever require a mall-like item because someone on my list has to have something that’s “as seen on TV” or something, I have only to duck down to the Poughkeepsie Galleria, which is more than adequate.

Now that I’ve confessed what lures me to the other side of the river, I’ll address why left-bank dwellers might venture to this side for shopping.

For one, not everyone knows that our many historic sites mostly have charming gift shops on site that are a great source of interesting and unique gifts. Also, because we have the Culinary Institute of America, many of our stores and eateries cater

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December 6, 2018 Holiday Gift Guide to chefs in training and graduates (I’m looking at you, Warren Kitchen & Cutlery). There’s a fun store at the CIA itself, too, with lots to love for any foodie on your list.

If you used to live in the city and miss shopping there, some of our towns can give you a feel for it, like Rhinebeck, which sometimes reminds me of the Upper East Side of Manhattan, with prices to match.

It’s the same with Hudson in Columbia County. After many years of being known as a great place for antiquing, Hudson has become very high-end, upscale and chichi — even more so than Rhinebeck. If you haven’t been in a while, its transformation will amaze you.

Further south, Cold Spring in Putnam County is full of boutiques that can make you forget you’re not in Gotham. Beacon, back up in Dutchess, is more Greenwich Village-y, with

a fun, quirky personality, and a great town for gift shopping. Check out Hudson Beach Glass or Dream in Plastic, two of my faves.

Because the Hudson Valley was once an import-

| 13

ant place for furniture manufacturing and a major trade route, as well as a place where Germans and Dutch people settled and built and furnished homes, we have a lot of antiques around which make impressive, distinctive gifts. Both sides of the river offer plenty of antiques shopping, but I think our side has more, with several towns that have reputations as destinations for fine antiquing, like Hudson, Millerton, Rhinebeck and Hyde Park. There are several large antiques centers with multiple vendors for that unique present.

So, although I can find all I need close to home, there are plenty of places to go on either side of the river to make everyone on my list happy.

Your chances of ďŹ nding uniquely beautiful items for the people on your list are much greater in the mom-and-pop shops of our towns and villages than at big-box stores and malls full of chain stores.

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6, 2018 14 | December Holiday Gift Guide

Gifts for young adults A surprising proportion of 20-somethings are more concerned about giving than receiving

by Terence P Ward

I

f the many online gift guides are any indicator of what 20-somethings desire, there might be a lot of copies of Michelle Obama’s memoir given this year, along with a variety of cool tech gadgets and maybe a new car or two.

On the other hand, those guides and other ads might be more about convincing consumers what to buy for the newest adults in their lives.

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A recent sampling of 20-somethings in the New Paltz area revealed that they’re not too keen on being asked for a wish list. The savvy gift-giver must be resourceful in searching for clues as to what members of this demographic would like to unwrap this December.

James Maltes, from Wa s h i n g t o n v i l l e , knows the drill. “My mom has been asking me if I want clothes or tech,” he said. What she needs to hear is that clothes he can wear out to a restaurant or similar would fit the bill: shirts, vest, jeans, shoes. “That would help every day,” he said.

Aaron Wesdorp counts himself among those who don’t ask friends and family members for suggestions. Unlike many in his age group, however, he’s ready with specific ideas for what he wants: “art markers and pads, books on Wicca, laptop stickers, handmade gifts.” Those in his social circle are likely to get handmade items, such as sewn bags and knit hats, in return.

It might be that young adults aren’t entirely sure what they want because their preferences are a moving target. Bobby Eichner of New Windsor has watched his tastes evolve from when he was a teenager. “I used to want gimmicky stuff like an Xbox, but now I want things that are functional,” he said, like gas money, or an iPad or stylus for classes. “It’s not about stupid things, I want more adult gifts.”

Jasmine Wynter is pitching perhaps the most practical gift any college-enrolled young adult

The reason why it’s often hard to get a wish list out of those 20-something family members may be because they are trying out a different way to give.

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color December 6, 2018 Holiday Gift Guide could ask from her family: “I asked for a winter class,” she said. A three-week, three-credit online course would move her closer toward completing her degree. Gift-giving was “not a priority” in her family, she said. Whether shopping for consumer goods was the best use of time and money depended upon one’s priorities, she said.

While Kristen Ranieri, a Rockland resident studying in New Paltz, wouldn’t mind some makeup, she’s also really hoping for some warmer clothing. Yes, it’s colder here than in Rockland County. A full-time student, Ranieri doesn’t have many gift suggestions because she’s more focused on giving than receiving. There were challenges to having no income while she was in school, she conceded.

Clothing is also a priority for Elizabeth Fordyce of Saratoga. Her desire is for “comfy” rather than warmer. Like Ranieri, Fordyce enjoys the challenge of shopping for others, but without a car and living in New Paltz she said she found it hard to get to shops where what she was seeking might be available.

Hadrian Villers is a French citizen with a heart-melting hope: “I want a trip to see my family,” he said. “It’s been two years. I think they will do it.” As for wrapped packages left under trees or on mantles, “I’m too old to ask for presents,” he said.

“I used to make a list,” said Nyack resident Thomas Meyers, “but not as much anymore.”

His family members frustrated by that tendency might take heed as to how he shops for them in turn. “I don’t ask them directly,” he said. “I try to be surreptitious.” His strategy involves steering the conversation to the other’s interests and listening closely for clues that emerge.

Serena, who hails from the “boogey-down Bronx” and declined to provide another name, said she didn’t like asking for things. Pressed to

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provide more, she conceded she “asked for the craziest socks.” She employs a multiple multipl plee strategy: strateeg strategy gyy: “I buy one gag gift and one real one. onee. They Th T heeyy laugh lau aug gh h at at one, or both.”

| 15

Gillan MacDonald tries to avoid the whole holiday thing. never have had a wish list,” said ho olliiday d y thin da th iin ng. g “II n MacDonald, Gardiner resident. “Sometimes I MaaccD M Do on naalld d,, a G forget holidays are happening.” His tuning out the ffo org rgeett h oliid ol daayys ar

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color 6, 2018 16 | December Holiday Gift Guide near-constant marketing reminders frustrates the people flinging reminders his way. For his own part, “I shop by guessing.”

Yonkers resident Amanda, who offered only her

first name, doesn’t come up with a wish list “unless my parents force me.” That hadn’t happened yet, she said just before Thanksgiving, but when the time did come she expected her list to include

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“shorts and dresses, but I’ve given it no thought.”

Turning the tables, Amanda likes to ask her relatives general questions and distill gift ideas from those conversations.

Tara, who hails from Queens and also preferred only to provide one name, appreciates the dilemma family members might face: “My dad isn’t gift-savvy,” she explained. Coming up with a list felt more like a chore than a joy. “I need new gloves, I’ll ask for that, but that’s all I’ve got,” she said. She loved giving, though she said that was in part because it was more enjoyable to think about others than about oneself.

“I had a wish list as a child,” recalled New Paltz resident Jade Horton, “but I stopped expecting gifts.” His attitude toward the season was a bit, well, jaded. The season was “just an excuse to spend too much money at the same time.” Horton said he doesn’t limit giving to any particular time of year. He enjoyed buying things for loved ones and was always willing to help those in need. In general, he feels that people in America “don’t celebrate the real meaning of Christmas, what we see in Christmas movies.”

To Sierra Pardus, employee at a local retail shop, the holidays are about what she can do for others.

She has a political perspective. “I think about giving,” she said, more than receiving. “People asking what I want makes me uncomfortable, because I don’t want to pander to late-stage capitalism by getting things that will end up in the trash.”

Flipping the script, Pardus doesn’t demand a list any more than she provides one. “I’m attentive to detail,” she said. She prides herself on the things people said to her in conversation months earlier.

I have a theory. No one pitching a marketing plan wants to hear it, and no one looking for a quick shopping fix wants to know it, but the reason why it’s often hard to get a wish list out of those 20-something family members may be because they are trying out a different way to give.

Pay attention to loved ones, they may be thinking, and they will provide any number of heartfelt gift ideas which might not ever show up on a prepared list. What they most hope for may be gifts which show that someone was paying attention to who they are. That’s a message which could shake the post-capitalist holiday gifting machine to its very foundations.

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Holiday Gift Guide A time to be together

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color 6, 2018 18 | December Holiday Gift Guide

A holiday state of mind The season allows an escape into one’s own dimension

by Giada Labate

W

inter is amazing. I love this season. I always have.

I love that feeling in the air as fall ends and frost covers everything in its icing. It’s always so crisp and cool outside.

It gets colder and colder until winter just can’t be held off any longer. Then it snows.

As someone who’s always cold, I don’t really like being outside during winter. But I do like being inside in winter! I love waking up in my warm room and looking outside to see the world wrapped in that soft, cold white.

I like going downstairs and seeing snow piled up on the roads, so I don’t have to go outside or go to school. I can just stay inside, earbuds in and a cup of coffee in my hand. I like school a lot, but it’s so much fun to not do anything on a day when you were expecting to roll out of bed at six in the morning, miserable and exhausted, and head to

first-period gym class.

A nice break from everyday life. Hidden from the world. It’s like escaping into your own dimension.

With winter come all the holidays of December. There’s something for almost everyone in this season. For me and my family, as well as for many others, there’s Christmas. I love Christmas. The whole green, red and gold aesthetic of it all, Christmas cookies and hot chocolate. Trying whatever strange, festive concoction Starbucks has invented this year. Buying presents for your friends and family. Watching Christmas movies, listening to Christmas music.

I’m not really a Christmas-music person, but at this point I have no choice. “All I Want for Christmas Is You” covered by My Chemical Romance is both edgy and festive. It works for me.

Getting a Christmas tree is a delight. My parents and I used just to get a tree in town, but in the past few years we have gotten our tree at Bell’s Farm, which is a lot of fun because you can find a tree and cut it down yourself.

Then it’s finally here: Christmas morning.

There’s that great feeling when you wake up that only happens on special occasions. You’re just so excited, waking up in pajamas and hurrying down Since

1978

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the stairs to see all the presents under the tree.

Then I have to wait for my mom to wake up because she doesn’t understand choosing to get up early when you don’t have to.

Finally, you get to open presents! Even if you’re an adult, getting presents is fun, unless the present is socks, of course. Even then, socks can be nice if they’re really soft socks.

In my house, after opening presents we watch “Christmas Story” as many times as we can before I go insane. I love it.

Only a few days later, the year is over. It’s been a long year, 2018. It feels like it’s been like three years crushed into one.

The year starts all over again. For a lot of people, the new year is also a chance for them to start over again. For even more people, the new year is a day to tell themselves they are going to lose 25 pounds or run eight miles every day.

Not to worry. Three weeks into 2019, they’ll start falling back into old habits. It’s hard to change once you’re set into your ways, especially if you set yourself a really ambitious goal.

From my experiences, start small. Lose five pounds instead of 25. Run one mile every day instead of eight.

One thing is sure. When the year begins, we’ll have another whole year until this lovely season begins again.

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| 19

Christmas detritus Louis. But then they join in, and before you can say “Jack Frost” Fawn’s found my piece of tinfoil and Milo’s asked me to tell its story. I explain how that first Christmas on Mott Street by myself except for a poinsettia I fashioned a whole roll of aluminum foil into ad-hoc ornaments.

Decorating with the heart

by Paul Smart

A

mong my most treasured holiday objects is a brittle old piece of tinfoil I originally squished together in a Manhattan walkup studio 38 Christmases ago. My wife Fawn noticed it while we were putting up our first tree together 18 years ago. She scoffed when she saw me beaming as I pulled it out from amidst boxes and bags of old ornaments, lights, used tinsel and mouse-nibbled candy canes.

After I told her what that piece of detritus meant to me, though, it became a centerpiece to our family decorations. It’s also a key to my entire approach to holidays and decorating, and by inference to much else. I think it provides insight into how aesthetics shapes our lives and provides an alternate vision to the algorithms which increasingly define so much of our lives.

I grew up in a family that waited until Santa brought a tree. Each Christmas morning, my brother and sister and I would get into bathrobes and slippers and emerge into the fir-scent of our apartment living room to see a twinkling tree surrounded by presents, sequin-festooned stockings overflowing with fruit and candy. There were always mugs of hot chocolate plus plates piled high with the holiday cookies we’d been making from grandma’s patterns over the previous week.

I’ve since heard my parents, long divorced, speak of how much work they’d put into those long nights. They made up for a limited budget by creating an event that wowed us kids into loving whatever we got.

Eventually, our big-bang Christmas mornings abated. We spent a couple of years in England without our usual ornaments, decorating with threaded popcorn, looped construction papers, and holly berries. Acrimony entered the season.

Everything began to get a bit rushed.

Eventually, the stash of ornaments we grew up with – most made by the same grandmother who festooned our stockings with the years we were born and made us custom decorations each year (as well as those cookie patterns) – got split up.

Each of our parents remarried into other holiday traditions, more spare and designerish on the one hand, and even messier and adhoc on the other.

I spent years traveling for the holidays. It was a way of not having to hurt one parent by visiting the other. It was also a way of having the holidays my way.

eymooned. Fawn shared my taste for the eclectic.

Back home, together we’d roll eyes over the white light elegance of so many of our friends’ decorations. We added decorations that validated our taste from Mexico, Miami, the wild side of Maui, and the Arab banlieus around Paris.

ST GU

O ION

D

Once we had a kid, things got even wilder. Our house approximated the explosive insides of a well-shaken snow globe. Son Milo’s own art started joining the decorations on our tree and elsewhere. The big parties returned, and with them even more decorations.

Now the entire tangle of lights, old tinsel, and masses of decorations old and battered and newer and ornate, sit in piles of old boxes thrown together hastily each New Year’s Eve. We never remember where anything is, or which light strands work.

But that’s the joy of the season, along with the mass of old holiday albums I play endlessly as first I and then all of us get everything up.

Each time, my son rolls his eyes at dad’s mess, and my wife speaks at length about how much she hates the season, having missed it as a Jew in St.

Holiday decorations are more about memories and meaning than aesthetics.

I

found that I adored colorful lights and loads of tinsel. My grandma’s antique decorations started to fall apart after 50 years, but I had plenty of other things to add to what went up: things from friends that meant more in memories than in beauty. Christmas cards, especially the many handmade ones I’d get each year, stayed up. Pieces of kitsch. A weird tinfoil Star of David with a sponge-leaping deer attached to it sat atop everything.

The trees changed year to year. Sometimes I’d try to cut something from out in the woods. Okay, hemlock looks spindly by itself, but not when you surround it with a house filled with hemlock boughs, lights, tinsel and candy canes everywhere.

Bare branches with paper fronds look even worse, if taken alone. Before long, though, my decorating started to gain its own following… or at least my annual holiday parties did.

On the first Christmas my wife and I traveled abroad, we marveled at the strange trees that welcomed us here and there around Mumbai and the south Indian state of Karnataka where we hon-

O

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ver recent years, we have found ourselves drawn, as a family, to equally crazy public decorations. We love rural hamlets where the houses seem to have rolled themselves in lights for a month, like freed puppies in goose poop. We partake in the crazy Washington Park scene in Albany each season, and we make sure to view the aged elves’ houses in Hudson’s Seventh Street Park. We’ve made our way to Detroit for its lights, visited the decorations at the Anheuser-Busch plant in St. Louis, seen the marvelous “Miracle on 34th Street” in Baltimore, and enjoyed the original Christmas light plant Edison had built outside Cleveland.

Whenever we got to such places, we’d quietly note how such old-school holiday hullabaloos had become outliers to the tastefulness taking over our malls, neighborhoods and homes. Yes, there’s a lot more blow-up holiday stuff now, and more twinkling strands and rotating musical home displays. But I can’t help but prefer the Christmases of yore to the algorithmic shopping choices of today.

It’s the same with home décor beyond the holidays. Ever-larger televisions have less and less to compete with now that magazine tastemakers have become ubiquitous.

God bless my mottled, now-antique piece of holiday tinfoil and all the other mouse-nibbled and mildew decorations from Christmases past. Like the fleeting brightness of the Hannukah candles we also light each holiday season, burning now as I type these sentiments, they shine better for their ephemeral quality. In the end, aesthetics may be more about memories, and personalized means for creating order out of our individualized lives, than they are about any lasting ideal of beauty.

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6, 2018 20 | December Holiday Gift Guide

The Adoration of the Magi, Ethiopian, date and artist unknown.

‘The imagination knows all stories’ You either love this time of year or you hate it

by Elisabeth Henry Macari

H

ere we are, many of us, living in what looks like a Christmas card. As I tap away, snow filters down out of soft, grey skies. Despite a crackling wood fire in one room and a humming pellet stove in another, I’m

freezing.

Bucks, their impressive antlers on full display, step carefully through my now-empty horse fields.

I am careful to wear a red hat and gloves when I go out early in the morning to collect kindling for fear a trespassing hunter might get me in the crosshairs.

The pretty birds of winter flit about outside. Are they hungry? I dare not put out feeders. Bears are hungry, too.

At night the sound of critters scrabbling in the eaves and walls adds to the seasonal music of wind and fire. I loathe the little bastards for soiling my utensil drawer and eating nasty little holes in my favorite woolens and linens.

This is why I love my cats. Except that now, unlike summer, my cats prefer the litter box to the mossy patch out back. I hate that.

These clashing paradigms are as familiar and predictable as Walmart’s fake garlands and the intrusive chorus of “Have a Holly Jolly” crowding out the Halloween stuff.

What I write here is true, all of it. Ancient rabbinical wisdom instructs us that two or more things can be true at once. One hopes this could pave the way for peaceful, reasoned dialogue on the subject. It won’t.

It’s the season of the winter solstice, the con-

frontation between day and night, light and dark.

Celebrate. Or condemn.

You either love this time of year or you hate it.

You either revel in the snow or curse the need for shovels. Either your eyes grow moist at the swelling Hallelujah chorus, or you spit at the tradition of the Christmas tree as wasteful and stupid.

How long these antithetical states of mind and heart survive in yourself is unique to you.

N

owhere in this variegated changing pattern is the tension worse than around gift-giving. It is true that at this time we are victim to the vicissitudes of crass commercialism.

And exposed, too, to all sorts of bell ringers and retainers for supposed worthy causes.

When last I picked up a load of feed, young men were stationed outside behind a table. The table was laden with memoirs of drug addiction and redemption. Prominent was a big, plastic receptacle designed to take in paper currency. The name of their rehab program was unfamiliar. Drug abuse

while we bemoan the crass commercialism, we kinda like the deals. If not, the day after Thanksgiving would leave many of us with nothing to do.

Crass commercialism can work on the side of those who disdain. I remember when the tune “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” was a Top-40 hit, likewise The Pogues’ “FairyTale of New York.” Ka Ching.

Getting deals at this time of year may or may not be part of gift-giving, but gift-giving is deeply ingrained in the holiday, and furthermore, in us.

This is not because of the commercialism. Giddy free enterprise at Xmas is directly indebted to ancient, ancient ways, and I’m not talkin’ “We Three Kings” here. Go way back further.

Giving gifts may be one of the oldest human activities. As primitive hominids we gave food and shelter to those we hoped would live. As our consciousness developed, it seems we gave gifts to express states of mind, like love and affection. Gifts were bestowed as a status symbol when leaders of tribes or clans wanted to show their appreciation.

These items might be an unusually shaped rock, a tooth from an animal, the bark from a tree. As tools developed, the gifts became more elaborate. Holes were drilled into animal teeth and stones so they could be displayed on necklaces and many other objects.

Egyptian gifts were most notably given to pharaohs whose massive pyramids stored these items for the afterlife. In Roman times people presented each other with good-luck tokens, which lasted for centuries and later influenced all of Western civilization onwards.

It’s the season of the winter solstice, the confrontation between day and night, light and dark. Celebrate. Or condemn. is very much on our minds these days, so, piqued by compassion, I tucked a twenty in the slot. However, as I struggled to load 40- and 50-pound bags of feed into my vehicle, it did not occur to any of those burly young guys to help this old lady. Was I just another Yuletide sucker?

Anyone with food in the pantry and a roof over her head has a duty to give, to tithe, to actively show thanks now. It’s freezing (see above). And

S

uch tokens of good luck were used as presents to carry favors and show allegiance, which is still the case today. Think “Diamonds are Forever,” or “Promise Her Anything But Give Her Arpege.”

December 6, 2018 Holiday Gift Guide Gift-giving was not always an act born of generosity. Moranna, the Slavic goddess of winter, was (is!) a terrifying agent of torture and death. No sacrifices were made for her, because she would take the life of the priest rather than the sacrifice itself. However, during epidemic times, people would leave nuts and honey for her and they’d also leave a bowl of water and a comb should she wish to touch up her coif. These were expressions of respect, the goal being to prevent her from wreaking havoc on the family. If you have ever wondered about the etiology of the word “nightmare,” Moranna knows. Just look to the tradition of the Krampus in the European Alpine regions.

Unlike St. Nicholas, who concerned himself with rewards for good children, the Krampus focused on the naughty. He dispensed his attentions with a “ruten,” which is a birch branch. I don’t know how to say it in German, but his salutations went something like “I’ll give you something to cry about” before gifting the offending infants with a swat.

Apparently there are no rituals in which to appease the Krampus, but buttering up the dark side is as old as dirt. That’s how to ward off evil. In ancient Egypt, amulets were worn by the living and given to the dead. Some mummies had dozens of scarabs packed into their bandages.

I am not suggesting we pack scarabs into people’s bandages. But I will say how much I enjoy gift-giving. I like to see someone’s eyes when pretty papers are torn away and the item is revealed.

I gave a friend a copy of the ERA in book form. I found a commemorative plate from an important event that happened in my little town. It had no meaning to anyone save one dear lady I know.

I like to give people seeds from the flowers and vegetables I grow. These are my favorite sorts of gifts. But I enjoy the more prosaic, too. One of my daughters loves expensive perfume. Another one collects aprons. One of my sons loves World War II history. A dear friend loves cut flowers.

M

y gut tells me that God or the gods like it when we surprise each other. But it is significant to point out that many devout Christians hate gift-giving. Such behavior is a distortion of the faith. It is not religious. It is not holy.

I disagree with them. Those radical fundamentalists dislike everything I love about the holiday.

Pagan, they hiss. Well, if it looks like duck, and quacks like a duck.

But hey! Those Three Wise Men did not arrive empty-handed. Having given birth myself, I imagine that the Virgin Mary really appreciated the gold, the frankincense, the myrrh. Frankincense and myrrh smell nice, have healing properties, and can be used for massage.

Do I need to say what gold means at Christmas?

And while the gifts were intended for the child, (gold meant kingship on earth, frankincense as a symbol of deity, and myrrh as a symbol of death), who among us has not dipped in to the Halloween haul of our children?

My own mother used my copper-bottom pots that were part of the dowry my grandmother put aside for me. My mother had sadly taken them out of storage when it looked like I would be single forever, hanging out in music joints and theaters in Manhattan. And yet, now those very pots hang on hooks in my (at last!) marriage kitchen — good as new.

And as for the saintliness of the holiday, well, truth be told, the entire event is a pastiche of past revelry. Think Saturnalia. Booze, feasting, debauchery. How did we get from that to O Holy Night?

A

strology suggest that on December 25 the Christ enters the heart of the earth and the planet is swept by powerful solstitial radiations. Could it be that we feel those vibes? Who knows? I stand with anything that encourages cookies and hot toddies, and my guess is that’s how the early Christian priests convinced the pagans that the more things change, the more they stay the same, so why not convert?

As someone who loves this time of year, I suggest a compromise for those who love to gift, and those who think gift-giving is lame. I refer, of course, to the practice long held at Balmoral. That is, gag gifts.

Imagine yourself seated between Harry and Meghan on that tufted leather Chesterfield sofa, unwrapping a Squatty Potty selected just for you

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| 21

The Gift

by William Carlos Williams As the wise men of old brought gifts guided by a star to the humble birthplace of the god of love, the devils as an old print shows retreated in confusion.

What could a baby know of gold ornaments or frankincense and myrrh, of priestly robes and devout genuflections?

But the imagination knows all stories before they are told and knows the truth of this one past all defection.

The rich gifts so unsuitable for a child though devoutly proffered, stood for all that love can bring.

The men were old how could they know of a mother’s needs or a child’s appetite?

The Crazy Cat Lady Action Figure.

Bacon Bandages.

The Zombie Survival Guide.

Famous Rabbi Trading Cards (or coasters).

The Book of Passive-Aggressive Notes.

Emergency Underpants The Happy Man Bottle Stopper The Book of Crap Taxidermy Mister Rogers’ Encouragemints 10. Catflexing: A Cat Lover’s Guide to Weight Training

N

o matter what, we should all recognize that it will be a long, long time (and it will seem even longer) before The Easter Bunny and The Fourth of July trigger those of us addicted to outrage. Let us try to take comfort in the melody, if not the message, of the hymn Silent Night.

The song has a lovely origin story. On Christmas Eve of 1818 the young priest of St. Nicholas parish church in Obendorf faced disaster. The organ had been incapacitated by mice (the bastards!). The chance of fixing the instrument before the evening service was nil. But the young man took out a poem he had written several years before called “Stille Nacht.” He took his poem to the schoolmaster and organist of a nearby town and asked him to write a melody to accompany the poem on guitar. In several hours, the music was done and the carol was played for the first time that night at the Christmas Eve service.

Just one of those Christmas miracles! Too

But as they kneeled the child was fed.

They saw it and gave praise!

A miracle had taken place hard gold to love, a mother’s milk! before their wondering eyes.

The ass brayed the cattle lowed.

It was their nature.

All men by their nature give praise.

It is all they can do.

The very devils by their flight give praise.

What is death, beside this?

Nothing. The wise men came with gift And bowed down to worship this perfection.

corny? Let’s take our lead from John and Yoko and the lyrics of Happy Christmas (War is Over.) Let’s resist. Let’s put to rest the warring opposites, the tit for tat, the all or nothing.

These fulminations seem to gurgle up to the surface now. This season is nothing if not emotional. I could make a lot of money bartending on New Year’s Eve, but I can no longer handle the sad, sloppy drunks.

Despite what you my surmise, the winter solstice itself lasts only a moment in time. It’s later than you think. Death and re-birth. A flash and a wink. The shortest day. The longest night.

Fate awaits. Make it count.

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6, 2018 22 | December Holiday Gift Guide

A home for the holidays The kids worry about whether Santa will be able to get down the chimney

by Lisa Carroll

W

e found our forever-home serendipitously. My husband Tom had taken a drive along the border of Napanoch and Grahamsville, a beautiful scenic ride alongside the reservoir in late summer. He found a ranch house, bordered by few neighbors, with a deck to die for.

A perfect paradise for us, he told me.

With a little nudging, he took our youngest daughter Sammie and me for a drive-by. The owner happened to be working in the back yard, and he gave us a spontaneous tour. Much like an episode of HGTV’s House Hunters, everything fell into place. We loved the house. We could afford the asking price. We seemed able to sell our village home and pack — all in a sitcom hour.

Life sometimes happens like that. All of a sudden, the wheels turn in the right direction.

My girls are in a new school. The transition has been better than I imagined. With the holidays coming, I think they’re even more excited about the opportunities at our new digs. There’s a spectacular hill alongside the house for perfect sledding. There are beautiful blue spruces on the property, and when it snows their needles hold onto the shimmering flakes, turning the backyard into a sparkling snow globe. A herd of deer frequent the yard, nibbling the last grasses. The girls

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and I watch from the span of sliders lining our living room.

The home came with a fireplace. We’re not yet sure of its usability yet, but there’s an expert coming in a few days to go over our options. We intend on having a fireplace of some sort — whether we can get the Harriman model up to snuff or have to purchase a new one. The presence of a fireplace was of utmost importance to the girls.

How else was Santa supposed to get into the house and leave all those fantastic presents?

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My girls — eight and seven — still believe in Santa. I can’t believe they still believe in Santa, but I’m holding onto the conceit for as long as possible.

Yesterday, while out Christmas shopping, Sammie turned to me and said, “You know, mommy, Santa can hear you cursing in the car. He can hear everything.” With the same authority in her voice, she added, “I bet he heard I wanted a drone, too.”

“Yeah. We’ll see, kid,” I answered. I should probably curse less in the car.

I don’t look forward to the day when the girls turn to me and ask whether Santa exists. The other kids at school will probably tell them the whole story. Deep down, I think they know already, too.

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color December 6, 2018 Holiday Gift Guide They wrote their lists out while grandma and I prepared Thanksgiving dinner.

Sammie asked for the puppy she’s asked for every year since she could write. She added other things, like stuffed animals and games. She threw in the possibility of a new bike and a basketball.

Shelby, my budding diva, inquired about her very own makeup kit, fancy dresses and a stack of books.

They ended their messages with salutations to Mrs. Claus and good wishes to the reindeer gang.

Then the questions started.

“Grandma, does Santa go to your house?” Sammie asked.

My mom explained that she wrote him a note a

few years back saying that he could skip her house and go to homes that need him more.

“Daddy, what if we have a fire going? How’s he going to get in?” Sammie asked.

Shelby had the answer. “He has a special suit,” she explained. “The fire goes out when he comes down the chimney and he drops off the presents.

The fire comes back on when he leaves.”

I don’t look forward to the day when the girls turn to me and ask whether Santa exists. The other kids at school will probably tell them the whole story. Deep down, I think they know already, too.

The magic of the holidays is less about the jolly man coming down the chimney and more about

our family just being together. The spirit of the holiday is less about getting and more about giving — time, affection, hope.

Tom and I make it a point not to overload the tree and to try to really pinpoint the essential things the kids are asking for or need. We like to surprise them with our daft spying skills and get them the things they least expect but really want.

They’ll be getting a bucket of clothesline and pulleys so they can build zip lines in the woods for their stuffed animals. Unlike an actual spy, I won’t be able to contort my body through the maze of yarn zip lines inevitably strung throughout the basement to get to the washing machine.

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SUSAN BARNETT

Maddie Godman and Ian Feulner, owners of The Rag and Bone Parlor on Main Street in Cherry Valley.

Business in the boondocks “You can grow anywhere if you’re good at what you do”

by Susan Barnett

W

hy did Michael Paxton buy a building he’d never seen in a town to which he’d never been?

“I missed the seasons, the trees, the weather,” he said.

“After 30 years in California, I decided it was time to stop flying home every fall and get a place of my own. I was tired of just jobs, films, nothing to show but a resume.”

His new building is a tiny, historic commercial building in the village of Franklin, the charming little bump in the road in which I live atop Franklin Mountain on the old Catskill Turnpike. Paxton took possession just about a month ago. He flew back to California the next day.

Home, for Paxton, used to be Port Ewen. His

family business was the Capri Restaurant and Motel on Route 9W in Ulster Park. While he left to pursue a career in the film industry, he never shook off his affection for upstate New York.

He’s been in Los Angeles for 30 years. He’s written, produced and directed. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his film “Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life.” He’s currently working on a new film project, but he’s also hoping to open his new business back east in the summer of 2019.

Reader, I will confess I am somewhat to blame for his decision. We have been friends since we were in Mr. Ascarino’s sixth-grade class at Edson School in Kingston. When I told him I intended to move deeper into the Catskills, he started thinking about getting a place there, too.

When I sent him a picture of 375 Main Street in Franklin, he was smitten. We started talking about opening a business together. He could spend most of his time in LA., and he’d have someone he knew to keep an eye on his building and keep the business open.

I sell real estate. I write. I have bounced among

wanting to open a coffee-roasting shop, a general store, a custom lampshade shop, and any number of other ideas that may never see the light of day.

Unlike me, Paxton actually has a plan. He wants to sell his collection of TV and movie memorabilia. He’s got a lot of it.

“I started collecting when I worked at Disney,” he said. “I was working on The Little Mermaid. I started collecting film cels, maquettes (models of characters) and hand drawings.”

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6, 2018 28 | December Holiday Gift Guide That was back when eBay was new. The Little Mermaid sent his collecting into overdrive. “I am fascinated by the merchandising of film and TV,” he said. “And with eBay, I could find things I remember from my childhood.”

Paxton loves the shows from Screen Gems: The Monkees, The Partridge Family, I Dream of Jeannie, The Flying Nun, Lost in Space. He’s got lunchboxes, toys, games and puzzles. He has a particular soft spot for Bewitched and Dark Shadows.

He said his collection of feature film memorabilia includes thousands of posters from every period of film history.

“When I was a kid, you could buy this stuff for 69 cents at Smitty’s on Route 9W,” he remembered. “Now they go for thousands of dollars. But of course most of my stuff, like everybody else’s, got stored in a basement and got ruined.”

He tracked it all down and bought it again.

How big is his collection? Right now, two storage units in California plus floor-to-ceiling stacks of items in original boxes in the closets of his apartment.

Moving his collection to Franklin will be one of his bigger challenges. And then there’s the challenge of opening a business that is, let’s be honest, off the beaten path.

T

hat’s a challenge Phil Warish has been tackling for several years now. His business, Blue Farm Antiques, is just down the road from Paxton’s new building in Franklin. The place is an eclectic mix of styles and periods from antique to modern. Tucked in a corner of his showroom is an impressive vintage letterpress workshop. His training is in graphic design, and though Warish says only ten percent of his business is printing, last year he nearly sold out a 1200-card run of unique holiday cards.

“I got more involved in the Franklin Stagecoach Run Arts Festival this year, and I dropped the ball on the cards,” he admitted.

Blue Farm Antiques has been open full-time in its current building, which Warish owns, for the past two years. Before that, he rented space in a building up the street.

“The great thing about opening a business in a place like this is that overhead is so much cheaper, particularly if you can own the building,” said Warish. “You can experiment and play without the huge monthly expenses you’d have somewhere else … even just two towns away.”

He draws customers from the affluent lakefront village of Cooperstown, home of the Baseball Hall of Fame, as well as Binghamton and the Catskills, and out-of-towners who are just passing through.

“We’ve boomed on and off over the past few years,” Warish said. “There were five antique shops here in its heyday. But it’s like the gears haven’t quite caught. I’ve had $1500 and $2000 weekends, which is a lot for here. And when there were more restaurants and shops, cars were parked up and down the street on weekends. It proved we could draw an audience here that was more engaged.”

Businesses come and go in Franklin, and it got quiet again. “But there are a new businesses and new blood, and they have some interesting ideas,” Warish said.

“They’re bringing a gravity with them.”

In the meantime, he relies on the Internet, particularly for the holidays. Franklin’s annual Holiday Christmas Stroll is this Saturday, December 8, but Warish said he tends to keep his expectations low for sales during the holiday season.

“Like Thanksgiving weekend, I don’t worry about sales. I just have an open house and have a party.”

The Internet is a strong part of his business plan all year round.

“I had a thousand-dollar sale last night after posting an item on Instagram,” he said. “Social media is great for sales as well as marketing your business.”

SUSAN BARNETT

Phil Warish, owner of Blue Farm Antiques.

Their shop, The Rag and Bone Parlor on Main Street in Cherry Valley, has been closed due to construction on their building. They’re hoping it’ll be open for the village Holiday Open House the weekend of December 7.

“We’ll pull out the small items for that,” God-

has been home to artists, writers and avant-garde outcasts. Each summer, the musicians of the Glimmerglass Opera move in and the night breeze carries the sound of music.

Godman and Feulner grew up there. They both left. When they came home, they found each other and decided to stay. “The shop was a dream for both of us, but even in Cooperstown we wouldn’t have been able to afford to do it,” Godman said.

The Rag and Bone Parlor is a treasure shop of oddities and treasures in two large rooms at the base of a massive Victorian storefront. Feulner has turned the second room into a record shop and listening room. The main room has everything from vintage clothes and furniture to animal skulls and Native American jewelry from Santa Fe. “Promoting ourselves on Facebook helps,” Godman said. “And our booth at the Artisan Guild on the grounds of the Glimmerglass Opera was awesome.

Glimmerglass keeps us in business!”

Cherry Valley is also just a few miles from Sharon Springs, home of Beekman 1802, a destination home-décor business that draws visitors from all over the country. “We’re an hour to Albany, two hours to Hudson, close to Cooperstown and Sharon Springs,” said Godman. “It’s actually a great location. And it’s a great town.”

But Godman is convinced location isn’t everything.

“In the antiques world, if you have an eye, you can grow anywhere. Once people get to know you, and they know what you’ve got, you become a destination. I think if that happens for us, we’re going to stay right here. You can grow anywhere if you’re good at what you do.”

‘The great thing about opening a business in a place like this is that overhead is so much cheaper, particularly if you can own the building,’ said an antique store owner. ‘You can experiment and play without the huge monthly expenses you’d have somewhere else … even just two towns away.’

M

addie Godman and her husband, Ian Feulner, are also navigating the challenges of having a retail business in a small town.

man said. “Big stuff like furniture doesn’t usually sell. But it’s so nice to see the whole town come together. It’s got such a great spirit.”

Cherry Valley is a small town in Otsego County about 20 minutes beyond Cooperstown, about an hour from Franklin. Similar in size to Franklin, it has a more bohemian vibe. Its rolling farmland

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December 6, 2018 Holiday Gift Guide

| 29

More holidays to celebrate Betcha you missed some of the best ones in the first four days of December!

by Sparrow

Y

ou’ve probably heard of Kwanzaa, Hanukkah and Christmas (incidentally, this year Hanukkah runs to December 10, and Christmas will be on December 25. Kwanzaa is always December 26 through January 1. But what about the eccentric “little” holidays that decorate December? Are you aware of them?

Let me give you a brief overview.

December starts strong – on its very first day – with a celebration of Antarctica, which is not just some isolated polar outpost but a bona-fide continent. The southernmost landmass is nearly twice the size of Australia, has the highest elevation of any continent, but contains no countries. Wikipedia gives its population as 1106.

Antarctica is essentially a condominium, meaning a territory that’s shared by various nations without being chopped up. (That’s an actual geopolitical term; I’m not making an obscure joke.)

When humanity reaches a more advanced moral level, somewhere around the year 6102, the whole world will be a condominium.

Antarctica is the only continent where the majority of citizens are scientists. Perhaps scientific technicians are drawn to the place because they typically wear white lab coats, and Antarctica also wears a white coat – of ice and snow. Seventy percent of the fresh water on earth is found there.

Antarctica’s the only continent where penguins outnumber people 3000 to one. If you bump into someone in the dark south of the Weddell Sea, you need not say, “Excuse me.” It almost certainly will be a penguin.

But guess what outnumbers penguins?

Give up? Nematode worms!

Antarctica was discovered in 1820. George and Martha Washington had no idea this major landmass existed. Antarctica is the best place to hunt for meteorites, partly because they are helpfully visible on the white ice.

Hold on! We’re not through with December 1!

Besides Antarctica Day, it’s also Eat a Red Apple Day! And Civil Air Patrol Day! And Clark Kent’s birthday! Actually, extensive research reveals that Clark Kent has several putative birthdays, offered by various comic-book scribes over the 80 years since his debut in Action Comics #1. June 18 is the day Martha and Jonathan Kent found him as an infant in a Kansan cornfield. February 29, Leap Day, has also been offered as Clark’s birthdate. But December 1 is a valid possibility.

Who chooses these dates? The USA must have the most bogus holidays of any nation. No doubt some over-caffeinated publicist decided that December 1 is the exact moment most Americans are beginning to forget about apples, after a gratifying fall harvest.

(Though Antarctica Day, you’ll be happy to know, memorializes the moment in 1959 that twelve nations signed the first international treaty governing the windiest continent.)

Meanwhile, we’re still not finished with December 1. It’s the beginning of both Cookie Cutter Week and National Hand Washing Awareness Week. Now you are probably already aware of hand washing, but I’m betting you’re hopelessly uninformed about the Cookie Cutter Collectors Club, and their unique historical museum in Joplin, Missouri, which sells souvenir signs with the slogan “A Balanced Diet Is a Cookie in Each Hand.”

Incidentally, did you know that cookie cutters may also be used to shape “tea sandwiches”? Who

DION OGUST

Cookie Cutter Week is almost over! invented the metal stencil – which is called a “biscuit cutter” in Britain? One theory is that traveling medieval tinsmiths would fashion extra tin into cookie cutters as gifts for clients. We’re talking 15th-century Italy.

Now you can make an entire chess set out of sweet dough, thanks to thoughtful cookie-cutter makers. You may also bake simulacra of mermaids, baby rattles, gingerbread women, Aladdin’s lamp, the Eiffel Tower, a vintage Chevy, dreidels, yoga practitioners, the Egyptian god Horus, bicycles, gift tags, Mardi-Gras masks, maps of the continental USA, pots of gold, a director’s clapboard, Varsity letters and llamas. (If you must know, these are all available on www.fancyflours.com.)

ly therein.

The page is linked to National Black Dog Day – which isn’t in December at all, but on October 1 – part of a movement to end the stigma attached to ebony canines. Black dogs are the least adopted dogs in the world. (Those of us who are “human mutts” – the offspring of a German shepherd and a husky Alaskan, for example – are also free to celebrate this minor holiday.)

December 2 is also Good Neighborliness Day in Turkmenistan, a time for citizens to meet one another, exchange bread and salt, and perhaps attend a folk-dancing performance, where lines of women in golden metallic hats twirl in synchrony.

December 4 is Wear Brown Shoes Day. Though the origins of this celebration are veiled in mystery, it must be gratifying to drive to work on the fourth day of December wearing soil-colored footwear, knowing that one is part of a vast army engaged in near-invisible nonconformity.

Wear Brown Shoes Day is the same as Sock Day. Clearly, whoever coordinates these holidays made a boo-boo. There is an inherent conflict between shoes and socks that no day in early December can hope to reconcile.

Oops, I’ve run out of space. Look for me next year, when I discuss December 5!

Wear Brown Shoes Day is the same as Sock Day. Clearly, whoever coordinates these holidays made a boo-boo. There is an inherent conflict between shoes and socks that no day in early December can hope to reconcile.

But that’s not all! December 1 is also Rhubarb Vodka Day and Bifocals at the Monitor Liberation Day. (Yes, I know what you’re thinking. “What the hell is Bifocals at the Monitor Liberation Day?”) It’s an opportunity for citizens who don’t use bifocals to feel compassion for bifocals-wearers, who must constantly decide which half of their glasses to look through while sitting at a computer. The idea is to approach a bespectacled computer operator and say, “Gosh, I feel awful for you!” Then – though this isn’t mandatory – you may console the bifocals victim by offering them a cookie cutter in the shape of the Egyptian god Horus.

Well, I hate to do this, but it’s time to move on to December 2, which is Safety Razor Day and Mutt Day. “I May Not Be Pure But … I’m Purely Lovable” is the slogan atop the Mutt Day Facebook page; the phrase “fur babies” also occurs frequent-

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6, 2018 30 | December Holiday Gift Guide

Forgive and forget What can you really give those you love this holiday season?

by Harry Matthews

B

y the time you find yourself reading this, we undoubtedly will be knee-deep into winter, with the Yuletide fast approaching and perhaps still only the bare bones of our Christmas shopping lists completed.

Pressed for time and your mind drawing that familiar blank, you might wonder what could possibly be different with this year’s gifting to those you love.

Will dad yet again get another ridiculously comic necktie that will only ever be worn for the couple of hours following his unwrapping of it? Maybe mom gets that thoroughly inappropriate apron with a naked woman’s midsection emblazoned on it. The rest of the immediate family — brothers, sisters, nephews, and nieces — will have to make do with the thoroughly unoriginal present of maybe an iTunes or Barnes and Noble gift card.

You don’t feel good about it, but at least you’ve covered all your bases.

Strangely, sometimes the longer we know someone the less we know about them. This can be especially true with family. We’ve known each other our entire lives, but I would be lying if I told you what they might be binge-watching on Netflix, or what was in high rotation on their favorites playlist.

Due to circumstances, we are pulled hither and thither to different cities and different states.

Whether a new job or a new relationship, losing touch with those we are often supposed to be closest to can be an unfortunate yet inevitable happenstance in life’s quirky roller-coaster ride. Then we come together at Christmas (or whatever holiday you may celebrate), having absolutely no clue who they are or what their tastes might be.

Of course, one can do the research necessary to help fill in the blanks of how your older brother’s youngest daughter is no longer that draped-inblack goth kid who you haven’t seen in a few years and now works for Google. You do have that vague memory that when she was your secret Santa a few years back her idea of a gift was a used copy of the second book in a three-part sci-fi series with the $0.25 price tag glaring back at you as you stare

wonderingly at the slightly torn dust jacket.

To avoid this type of gift-giving, you might need to find out a few of the likes and dislikes of the person you’re buying for. With the advent of eBay, Etsy, Amazon, and a million others like them, one can seek out exactly what fetishistic one-of-a-kind item that your special person might be dreaming of but doesn’t think it exists any longer.

To find out what that person desires, become an active listener. People are often not very subtle when it comes to voicing their hidden desire, that is unless it’s too controversial, possibly illegal, or so tightly locked in some dark recess of their brain that it will never come tripping off their tongue “accidentally” to see the light of a December day.

Of course, one also has the popular option these days of putting very little actual care or thought into the gift they give someone, opting for something that might appeal to them the gifter rather than the lucky receiver of said gift. In this case, one could journey out to the local mall and plunk down $19.99 on something neither giver nor re-

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A

s I write this I’m sitting in the ICU at a hospital in New Jersey across from my 85-year-old father, who is laid out possibly on his deathbed. He had had a revelation the day before that what he had really cared about his whole life was not what was truly important.

What was important, and what he desperately wanted to impart to me as we sat amongst the tubes, wires, and nurses coming and going, was that he loved me, that he loved all of his children, and that he hoped we would forgive him.

Forgive him for what? I asked.

“For being selfish, for holding on to things I should have let go of long ago,” he told me, tears filling his eyes as he gasped for another hardto-reach breath. “And for not loving you more throughout your life, as I always knew that I should.”

My father was an artist, an amazing painter who, in my estimation, had had a brilliant career full of praise, museum shows, and great sales of his work. To get to this place he had spent a lot of his time in his studio, going there like clockwork everyday at nine in the morning and not returning until around five in the afternoon. I had always been impressed with this work ethic, as he was the only one he had to answer to.

I had always been a bit lazier and a bit more spread out in my own interests; playing music, writing, as well as making art. But I never ever had anything near the drive that he exhibited on a daily basis. This impressed me deeply, though I had also always felt a bit guilty at not living up to his sense of drive and commitment to his art.

Where I loved to cook and knew a hundred or more dishes, he cooked two things: scrambled eggs and oatmeal. Where I loved planting flower beds and vegetable gardens, he taught my brother and me how to mow the lawn at a very young age so he wouldn’t ever have to do it again.

Where he rarely did anything that distracted him from his work, I felt my life was one long distraction of friends, lovers, bands, editors and gallerists. Now, as he was winding up his days under an oxygen tube, the first thing he thought of was apologizing to us all.

Zip

❑ Check here if you prefer an e-subscription. E-subs are full versions of our print newspaper Their user name and password will be emailed to them.

cipient will ever give two hoots about. Hopefully, not many will want to pick this option.

“

I

had a transformation,” he had told me through tears over the phone the day before.

“Everything I always thought was important was not really ever as important as I thought it was.”

He had asked me to rush down to New Jersey that day, as he thought he might go in the night. I

color December 6, 2018 Holiday Gift Guide couldn’t leave that minute, I told him, but I could probably leave first thing in the morning. Luckily my mother was at his bedside. She gently took the phone from him and told me that that would be fine.

As I hung up the phone, I too burst into tears as the reality of this situation struck me hard. Would I make it in time? What else did he want to tell me?

The next day, which is now two days ago from my writing this, I drove as fast as I could get away with through pre-Thanksgiving traffic to the hospital just off the turnpike in central Jersey. I relieved my very thankful mother, telling her to go home and get some rest, and went over and hugged my gaunt father across wires and tubes and nurses.

And then he poured it all out to me.

Over the next few days my whole family — brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, and a select few very dear friends – gathered around him, sitting as sentries on our shifts trying to make sure he didn’t pull off his oxygen tubes, while making efforts, often in vain, to explain to him that the hallucinations he was having were due more to the hard-core steroids they were giving him than any abrupt shift in the space-time continuum.

Explaining to your 85-year-old father that there was no giant bird chasing him around his small hospital room was almost as bizarre as the hallucination itself. Within a few days, though, he started to understand that the strange visions were just that. He began actually to laugh at the ridiculousness of them.

As we now close in on another gift-giving season — and hopefully without sounding too trite or cliché — isn’t the greatest gift we can give another person our love and forgiveness? Giving our loved ones love is an obvious enough thing to do, but forgiveness? Forgiveness for what, you might wonder? Maybe for all the times we gave in to our lesser selves, succumbed to our baser instincts, and shrank from doing the right thing — the chance to be our best self, opting instead for an easier, less challenging way.

None of this is easy, and God knows I dropped the ball more times than I care to admit. But here was a chance to amend all of that, to stand up and for once be the caregiver, the role my parents have spent their whole lives at. As the Brian Wilson song goes, “The child is father to the man.” That’s just how I was starting to feel in this predicament.

I had taken on a new role as parent to my parent.

I

n the end we all have our own myriad choices to make, some easy and some not so easy. Please understand that I don’t I do all my shopping surrounded by a heavenly glow that always reliably steers me away from the malls, but I do always try to find a balance as to where I put my cash.

If you choose to be a little less esoteric and purchase physical gifts, which I will surely do, why not buck the mall and keep your shopping local, patronizing the many mom-and-pop shops that fill our local villages?

As one example, I have a friend in Woodstock who has a groovy little shop just off the main strip that sells all types of religious artifacts, clothing, and whatever cool stuff he might find in his yearly journeying through India and Nepal. He also sells jewelry he designs and makes there as well.

As if that weren’t enough, his place also triples as a bookstore/small press selling volumes of poetry sides that he has had printed on handmade paper in Kathmandu. Following the devastating earthquake in Nepal a few years ago, he ended up donating the majority of the profits he made that year to help ease the suffering of people across that beautiful country. What better place could there possibly be to drop your hard-earned cash?

Beyond my friend’s groovy little shop, we are locally blessed with a surfeit of great independent bookstores from The Golden Notebook in Woodstock to Inquiring Minds (in Saugerties and New Paltz) to the several bookstores in Kingston (check out Rough Draft) and to the Spotty Dog in Hudson, where you can also enjoy a beer and possibly a reading or some live music to boot. Instead of Home Depot, how about filling your hardware needs at Houst and Sons or Smith Hardware?

At any of these places we may spend a few pennies more than at the megastores but we are also keeping those pennies local and perhaps helping a family-run businesses stay afloat.

Of course, sometimes the biggest challenge in fighting the ease and laziness that convenience slyly affords us takes our standing up and thus

facing it down. Though it is often easier to not tell those you love how you really feel, the reward the truth grants our courage is something possibly beyond our imagining. The one thing this holiday season gives back to us, often unawares, is the op-

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portunity to be bigger than we might ever imagine, kinder than we’ve yet been, and stronger than any weakness might have us falsely believe. And with that kindness and strength, be a gift of love and forgiveness.

color 6, 2018 32 | December Holiday Gift Guide

Our heart is with yours. Here.

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