Soap for Christmas?

Not a good idea, according to my favorite Australian satirist, Richard Glover.

WHATEVER happened to the global financial crisis? The shops are full of crazed people with a desperate look in their eyes, buying whole trailer-loads of useless stuff. Christmas stuff. Stuff like a cat calendar, purchased because Aunty Patricia has a cat; a golf ashtray, purchased because Uncle Terry plays golf; and a pair of socks, purchased because husband Tim has feet.

Even stranger are the gifts for those relatives so distant no one can quite remember whether they play golf or own cats. Even their possession of feet remains unclear. And so, for them, we buy soap.

Who was it that first came up with the idea of marketing soap as a luxury Christmas gift? I mean, really, soap? It makes as much sense as Special Occasion Windex, presented in a limited-edition Christmassy box: “Mum mentioned that your house has windows, Aunty June, so I thought this was just perfect.”

If a normal household consumable, such as soap, is considered an appropriate gift, it’s really hard to know where to stop. What about Toilet Duck wearing a garland of holly, a bottle of Domestos in a sparkly red-and-gold tin, or an eight-pack of festive toilet paper, festooned with smiling Santas and tiny, cute elves?

But no, on offer is just the soap: a whole display cabinet of the stuff, each bar in a pretty box with a ribbon on top and some sort of faux British brand-name, such as Evelyn and Norwich, Sandhurst and Lynne, or Frobisher and Martinet. Who creates these names? Are they real or do they just flip through an old copy of Debrett’s and cobble them together?

The soap inside is, after all, just soap – normally a mixture of rendered beef fat and cheap perfume, boiled up in a factory in South Melbourne. Try putting that on the box and see if grandmother O’Brien still trembles with excitement.

I worry also about what message is sent by this annual belief in the festive qualities of soap. Is buying soap another way of saying “You smell”? When you lean over and place the package in your grandmother’s trembling hand, are you in fact saying: “Frankly, old stick, I find myself getting a little woozy every time you hover into view and I thought this might help.”

Soap, mind you, is not the only present that may deliver a mixed message. A Britney Spears CD says “I think you have crap taste” more eloquently than words themselves. Same story with a copy of the latest Wilbur Smith blockbuster. And is there a verbal insult as pointed as free tickets to Rolf Harris Live?

It’s not just the cultural offerings. On every possible occasion on which a gift may be offered, I now find myself presented with a bottle of Hunter Valley shiraz. It’s a gift which, while welcome, comes complete with the whispered aside: “Your reputation as an alcoholic remains as undimmed as the redness of your cheeks.”

Still, at Christmas time, you have to buy something . . . even if it is overpriced junk with an insult attached. It’s why, on Christmas morning, people in their millions open their presents, turn to the giver and announce: “You really shouldn’t have.”

At the shopping mall, the cars circle the block waiting to spot someone returning to their car. They are like hungry lions, waiting for a limping wildebeest to happen by. Once spotted, the circling car noses towards its prey – virtually locking its front bumper to the back of his legs. It’s the yuletide way of announcing: “This shopper is mine. I have claimed his car space. I shall trail him for days if that’s what it takes.”

Three days later you finally get a parking spot and enter the mall. Inside, it’s hard to imagine how they could squeeze one more person in here. It’s like a Guinness World Records stunt in which 47 teenagers tried to get into a Volkswagen. Or in this case: 2034 people try to squeeze into one JB Hi-Fi.

People are so desperate to buy. They heave themselves at gift-pack T-shirts like Russians in a bread riot. They surge towards $5 DVDs with the reckless fervour of sex-starved groupies at a Queens Of The Stone Age concert.

Pressed hard up against a display of MP3 accessories, I remember Jocasta’s father and his present-giving idea from her teenage years: each year he would give her money but presented in an interesting way. One year, it was $1 notes pinned together to make a piece of fabric; another year the notes were scattered through a copy of Bleak House. At the time, we mocked him for giving cash but now I understand the enormous wisdom he displayed.

I’ve just checked out the work of Charles Dickens on Wikipedia: an impressive 32 publications. With five-dollar bills spread through each, I’ve just dealt with Jocasta’s Christmas presents until the year 2040.

At which point, I’ll just have to find something else. I’m thinking of a couple of bars of soap, the really good stuff with the oatmeal chips, from Tundra and Smyth. Anything to hear her utter those wonderful Christmassy words: “You shouldn’t have. No really, you shouldn’t have.”

Peter