For Christmas one year my gift was a photo iPod.

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Around this time, my family is busy preparing for Christmas traditions: the gift giving, the midnight candlelight service, the feast on Christmas Day.

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This Christmas I will not only be researching my gift choices through my smartphone but also using it to swipe the barcodes of presents in store and then tap or wave as I pass through the checkout.

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For Christmas, my father gave me some very generous clothing gift certificates.

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Until that Christmas, when I opened a rectangular gift and realized, to my shock and disbelief, that it had all been an elaborate con.

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You know, my grandmother was a Lutheran from Minnesota and a great woman, but the worst Christmas present gift I ever got--the strangest one--was she gave me two stuffed anatomically correct dolls, male and female.

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