For some reason, I wasn’t really “into” Christmas this year. I don’t know what the cause of it was, but I wasn’t really into the whole holiday season at all. I’m not saying that I was miserable or depressed or anything like that – not at all! I just didn’t feel like putting up the tree (so I didn’t) and it took all that I had to send out Christmas cards (I sent them about three weeks later than usual), and I even didn’t feel like buying gifts (I got them last minute and had to have them rush delivered so they arrived on time). And for those of you who know of the two tragedies that I’ve been dealing with – I had the lack of excitement for the holiday season well-before either of those situations presented themselves.
The only part of the season that I really looked forward to was going to church and going to my brother’s house for Christmas. If you want to count Thanksgiving as part of the holiday season, then I also looked forward to going to my Mom’s house for Thanksgiving, too.
However, there was one thing that made my eyes open wide and get really excited about the whole gift-giving part of Christmas. So, for your reading pleasure, here’s the brief story of the gift that caught my eye last winter and made my otherwise dreary holiday season pretty bright!
When you cut right down to it, I think that most of the people on this planet are nerds in one form or another. Sure, you might not have a pocket protector and yeah, you might not have glasses held together by masking tape, but chances are that there is something on this planet that you “geek out” over. When I suggest that you “geek out” over something, I’m talking about the type of reaction that you have when your favorite baseball team wins the World Series, when your favorite football team wins the Super Bowl, when you win your fantasy football league, etc. For some, it’s the type of reaction that you have when the extended editions of all three Lord of the Rings movies get released on Blu-Ray (with extras!).
Sometime last winter I was browsing around the internet and I came across a website with a simple name: Authentic Post Office Box Door Coin Banks. For the life of me, I can’t remember what brought me to that website. I think I was looking at a list on some website that talked about “cool gifts for men” or something like that – who knows? Anyway, I saw the coin bank fashioned from some wood and an old post office box door that was offered on this website and immediately I started geeking out over it. Go ahead, click over there and take a look and then come back and finish reading this post. I’ll wait…
Back? Did you go take a look? Good! It’s a pretty cool coin bank, right? Anyway, back to the story…
My family and I use Elfster.com for our Christmas shopping. It’s a good deal because you just post stuff that you want for Christmas and then your family buys it for you. Assuming everyone understands how the process works, you’re pretty much guaranteed to get exactly what you want for Christmas each year and you can even provide details on what customization that you want on your gifts. This year on Elfster the first gift I put on my Christmas list was the coin bank. I even left detailed instructions on which size coin bank I wanted and what number I wanted on the post office box door.
And last week on Christmas day, guess what I got?
How sweet is that? Come on! Look at the new coin bank as it stands next to the old plastic chocolate covered peanut jar that I’ve been using for the last few years:
There’s no comparison! And there’s the point of this update – that this coin bank, for some reason, makes me geek out and managed to bring some happiness to my otherwise “blech” holiday season. I don’t know why and I can’t explain it. I don’t know why I think this coin bank is the coolest thing ever. But when it caught my eye last winter, I bookmarked the page and said, “I need one of these things as soon as possible!”
If you have a guy in your family and you have no idea what to buy him for Christmas (or any holiday for that matter), then I strongly suggest getting him one of these coin banks. Maybe it’ll give him a geek out moment or a helping of the holiday spirit just like it gave me!
