Christmas shopping is a tinsel covered nightmare.

The endless spots on TV would have you believe it’s just a light hearted, fun filled chance to bathe the ones you love in the warmth you’ve been building up all year.  Bullshit.  Christmas shopping is a pop quiz, a trick question, a trap designed to reveal whether you really know another person or not.  The pressure is enormous, the stakes sky high.

Here’s how Christmas shopping went for us this year.

Gabriel – son – 11 years old:  about a month ago Gabriel began pleading me with me to get him a Wii.  “Wait, didn’t we used to have a Wii?” I asked.  “Yeah, but Rafi sold it to get an Xbox game, remember?”  I did vaguely remember something about his older brother Rafael sloppily packing up a box of junk and taking it to Gamestop to trade in for some other junk.  Gabriel’s question also brought to mind an earlier, disastrous attempt to sell an old Guitar Hero guitar on E-Bay.  If memory serves, we shipped it successfully, but payment never arrived, and I was too exhausted to do anything about it.

In any case, here’s the deal I made with Gabriel: if he scored two goals in his soccer team’s championship match last month, I would buy him his Christmas gift – the Wii – early.

After his first goal, late in the second half, I remember him frantically begging his team mates to pass him the ball.  It got embarrassing.  By then everyone knew Gabe would get a Wii if he got two goals, but the fact that it was an early Christmas present that he would’ve gotten anyway had been lost, so I just looked like an over competitive father spoiling his son.  I pulled him to the sideline, told him gently to shut up, and that one goal was enough – he’d get the goddamn Wii early.

Rafael  – son – 15 years old:  on December 19th, my wife went to the mall and bought him some new sneakers: some pretty cool DC black and gray shoes, size 13 (yes, I’m planning on his NFL career funding my retirement).  Linda got home, and before she was able to get one shoe halfway out the box to have Rafael try them on for size, he offered his considered opinion:  “No way, I hate them.”  My wife countered that she had asked the teenage clerks what kids considered “cool” these days, and they assured her black and gray DC’s.

Rafael wasn’t budging.

And here I had to take his side.  Earlier I told Linda this was a bad idea.  He’s fifteen: of course he wants to pick out his own clothes.  I advised her to drop him off at the mall with a budget, kill an hour at Cinnabon, then check in with him.  But no, she still wants to think of him as a little boy who’s happy with whatever mom buys.  In truth, the shoes we would’ve bought him regardless – that’s a need, not a want – so I’m still sticking to my initial plan: a $100 bill in a card.

It’s a home run, guaranteed.

Linda – wife – 39:  to my great relief, she went to Sears and picked out the elliptical machine she wanted a couple weeks ago.  She came back from the store with a scrap of paper on which the sales clerk had written down the model number of the machine, its price, the price of a two year warranty,the price to assemble it, and the price to haul away our old dying treadmill.  So all that’s left for me to do is go to Sears, buy the machine, and present it to Linda like I had thought of it myself.  We don’t call it delusion or deception.  We call it sensible.  I would no more pick out her elliptical machine than she should’ve picked out Rafael’s shoes.

Alfredo – me, husband – 39: the two pound box of See’s Candies I get from my sons is a given, and a welcome one at that.  I have a sweet tooth and two root canals to prove it, so when I say no other chocolate – not Godiva, not Josef Schmidt – compares to See’s, I know what I’m talking about.  I also asked Linda to pick me out some kind of sport coat.  At, ahem, 39, it seems to me I should dress like a grown up now and then.

Lisa – my mom – 39: usually I get her a massage.  She lives on the outskirts of L.A., and there is a masseuse up here, Charlotte, who she sees whenever she visits, but Charlotte is getting older, and her hands aren’t as strong as they used to be.  My mother got a recommendation from a friend for a different masseuse, and, for her last birthday, her 39th birthday, I bought her a gift certificate.  She liked the massage okay, but I think the guilt of betraying Charlotte ate at her and kept her from fully enjoying the massage.

So this year I’m breaking with tradition and buying her a toaster instead.  Also gift cards from JC Penney and Starbuck’s – practical, but not too exciting.  Not inspired, not like the genius of the toaster.

And why am I so proud of myself for coming up with the toaster?  Because it was born of personal observation.  I noticed when I visited my mom the last time that her old toaster didn’t have a removable crumb tray – she just leaves it sitting on an old foil pan – and it drove me crazy how, if I popped up a piece of toast early to see if it was done, and it wasn’t, I couldn’t just push the plunger back down and toast it some more.  I had to wait at least five minutes, caress the ignition, tap the gas just so, and pray the machine would come back to life.

So I did it.  All by myself I picked out a new toaster for her.  I also bought these special little tongs for removing toast without burning your fingers.

When I excitedly told my wife about my purchase, she said, “Y’know, all toasters take a while before they’ll let themselves get hot again.  It’s a safety thing.”  I reminded my wife I did better than her in math during high school, and sulked off to the bedroom.

Jim – stepfather – 39:  Jim’s tough.  There’s nothing he really wants.  In years past I’ve combed over every one of his habits, every tangential tidbit of conversation, in the hopes of figuring out something he’d like.  And there were helpful phases: he dabbled in poetry – we got him a book of poetry; he dabbled in painting – we bought him an easel and paints; he loves old film noir movies – we must’ve bought him every book on the subject.  This year he did the “Jumble” newspaper puzzle with me on a visit.

So it’s a book of Jumbles for Jim.

Our one indisputable home run?  His favorite movie of all time is “The Woman In The Window,” an obscure Fritz Lang film noir.  He had seen it as a boy and never forgotten it.  Well, due to some intrepid research on a thing called the computer, about ten years ago, I found out it had just been re-released and bought it for him.

He’s watched it at least a dozen times, quotes it regularly, and I swear, to this day it gives him almost as much pleasure as playing with Ozzy, our part Golden, part Lab, part x-factor dog.

Alfredo Sr. – father – 39: a no brainer.  It’s the two pound box of See’s soft centers.

They don’t have See’s in Spain, where my dad lives, so this is a big deal.  Also Secret roll-on deodorant for his sister, my aunt.

In turn, he sends me the best quality jamon serrano Andalucia has to offer – the “5 J’s” brand- similar to, but better than, the best prosciutto you ever tasted.

The package has already arrived, but I’ve left it unopened on top of the fridge, because my older son Rafael is addicted, and if I so much as open one package, all of it would be gone before I finish typing this sentence.

My mom loves it, too, so we’re saving some for her (she arrives today with my stepdad) and one of the three packs we’re saving for a Spanish-theme party we’ve been threatening to host for the last three years with two other couples in the neighborhood.

The wall calendars with pictures of us and the kids are also a staple for the grandparents.

Stocking Stuffers: always a bitch.  Sure, there’s the filler of walnuts and tangerines, but that can only get you so far.  So it’s multiple trips to CVS and local card/novelty shops for Pez dispensers, Starburst and Hi-Chew candies, glue sticks, liquid paper, post its, socks, pens, small packs of facial tissue, mini packs of Pringles, breath mints, and the occasional hard won bit of whimsy: mini-Rubik’s cube key chains; “Cat Butt” chewing gum; “homies” dolls; mini kaleidoscopes.

That’s it.  I’d get into the gifts for cousins, friends, in-laws and my staff, but I’m just too exhausted – ‘cause now, we gotta wrap all this crap!