The Advent Calendar is up to date. Well, I guess it won’t be up to date until I do today’s entry. I don’t know.

A Christmas Chia Tree update: The future centerpiece of Christmas dinner has begun sprouting its coat, but it’s definitely been a slow burn. I’ve made Chia Pets before and I know that they need time, but I still always hold to the unfounded expectation that they’ll go from Brazil to Europe in three days flat.

Chia Pets are championed for their “no muss, no fuss” process, but there’s a certain sense of Chia Anxiety™ that rears its ugly figurative head whenever I try to grow one. I always convince myself that I did something wrong. Maybe I didn’t soak the seeds long enough? Did I spread them evenly enough? Maybe my inclination to keeping our apartment at a constant temperature of 37 degrees is bad for Chia Pets? I’ll threaten suicide if a slow car makes me miss a green light; can you imagine the news report if I don’t have a picturesque Christmas Chia Tree by 12/25? Shit will be epic.

Upside: I took the above photo yesterday morning. Since then, I’d say that nearly twice as many sprouts have sprung. Oh yes, glory is coming. I’ll update you on my Christmas Chia Tree’s progress when it’s finally through with its boring pupal stage.

I have an incredible memory when it comes to Christmas presents. Wouldn’t claim that I remember everything I ever received, but I’m sure I could name more than 50% of the stuff. I bet plenty of you can, too. There’s just something about Christmas presents. Even bad ones.

But what about the stuff you gave out? Can you remember the first time you bought your family and/or friends gifts? For me, I’m pretty sure my first run at “giving” was during the fourth grade. I had around 50 bucks to spend, and six older brothers and sisters to buy presents for. Since most of them were already married or at least living on their own, I settled on giving everyone these horrible $5 glassware sets. You know the kind. A bunch of crude cups in Christmas red, in dented cardboard boxes with the “$5″ price tag visible not as a store-provided sticker, but as part of the actual product label.

I was so proud of those glasses, and the many other horrible Christmas gifts I gave out. Even if you didn’t believe in Santa, there was always a feeling that there’d be karmic retribution for spending money on someone other than yourself. The way I saw it, if I bought each of my sisters a $10 vanity mirror, I’d get a Nintendo back.

I found the two miracles shown above at Target the other night, and they really reminded me of all the many stupid gifts I bought for family members throughout my childhood. After all, who hasn’t gotten or given a weird “magnetic sculpture” or a silly “coin sorting bank” at least once in their life? They’ve been around forever, and no matter who sells them, they’re always the same.

As I’ve grown older, the stuff I give out for Christmas has upped in value. Once you hit a certain age, it’s virtually a social responsibility to spend “X” amount of dollars on Christmas presents. Sadly, magnetic sculptures and plastic coin banks do not make the grade. Even if they did, I’m not sure who I would give them to. It’s easy to plead ignorance when you’re in elementary school, but as an adult, there’s no way you can give someone a “coin sorting bank” and act like you thought it was kosher.

Whatever. I still love gifts like this. Just looking at them makes me remember what Bradlees smelled like. From Mancala games to red-boxed Old Spice sets, these budget-conscious “easy gifts” have quietly etched their spot in Christmasdom, somewhere between After Eight dinner mints and TBS’s Christmas Story marathon.

The “Magnetic Sculpture” includes a handful of magnetic bolts with a magnetic base, providing ample opportunities to use the word “magnetic” over and over again. You’ve seen it before. Maybe not in this exact shape and style, but everyone’s had something like this.

I guess they fall into the category of “desk toys.” As a kid, nobody gave you desk toys. You’d see them all the time, but you never had them yourself. You wanted to play with them, but they were on top of desks, where few kids were allowed to play without paying the price of a firm hand. Of course, this made them insanely appealing. Now that I have one myself, I see that it’s just a bunch of magnets on a podium. It’s just as awesome as I always thought it would be.

Even more incredible is the “Coin Sorting Bank.” I’ve had many like this, and I’ve given out a few of them, too. This one is extra skimpy, lacking the noisy, battery-operated pulleys and levers of the more expensive varieties.

It’s pretty simple — just a one-slot coin bank that separates pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters into piles. It doesn’t do this particularly well, though. While I was filling the bank up in preparation for the big “slice of life” photo shown above, at least a dozen coins got stuck in the upper compartment and wouldn’t come down until I shook the thing like the bad parent of a newborn baby. And even then, some of the dimes went into the penny chamber. I guess I shouldn’t expect that much quality control for ten bucks, but I hate it when dimes try to be pennies. Don’t they realize it’s a downgrade? Dumb dimes.

In any event, even a malfunctioning coin sorting bank is better than what we had been using to hold spare change…

A dusty mason jar. I don’t know how we ended up with so many mason jars. I swear, we’ve never made our own jelly or anything, not even once. Also: How did Squid Head’s head end up in there? Where is the rest of him?

Posted by Matt. E-mail me!