- A bag of candy you bought from a gas station five minutes before it was time to open presents. Seriously. No one would be upset about this. It’s candy.

- A half-empty box of Kleenex. It’s practical and useful. If they don’t like it, then maybe they should find some better friends who don’t drink so much.

- A fart enclosed in a sandwich bag. My brother doesn’t realize it, but I gift him this item each year when I visit his house. It takes many hours to fill all the sandwich bags in his cupboard.

- A “free blowjob” coupon that you meant to give to your boyfriend but accidentally put in a box addressed to your father. Comedy is better than sincerity.

- This column, cut out of the paper. My photo—which I’m pretty sure was taken eight years ago—is so handsome that they won’t even notice how dull and poorly executed my writing is. And how often I end sentences with prepositions and begin sentences with conjunctions.

- A holiday photo greeting card where you actually write a note or at least sign your name, for Christ’s sake. This entry is not in any way passive aggressively aimed at the four friends this year who sent me impersonal photo cards.

- A shitty portrait you painted of the recipient that they now have to hang in their home and stare at for the rest of their lives, or at least until you’re dead and can’t be offended by its removal.

- A plaster mold of your penis and testicles, painted to show your wife what it would be like if she had married a black dude.

- A live rat sewn inside an afghan. “Afghan” meaning a blanket, not a person from Afghanistan.

- A live rat sewn inside a person from Afghanistan.

- One of those styles of underwear that make your penis look really huge. Has that been invented yet? No? Well, why the hell not? Women with a “B” cup get to trick us into thinking they’re a “C,” so why can’t I trick women into thinking I have a “C”-cup penis? I swear to god, I WILL CANCEL CHRISTMAS.

- Episodes of “To Catch a Predator” that you recorded on a VHS tape, with the last fifteen minutes of the excellent Brian Dennehy film “Gorky Park” at the end of the tape.

- A Fedex package full of drugs that you mailed to yourself so you won’t go crazy when you fly home to spend a week with your parents.

- A peanut butter, marshmallow crème, and banana sandwich on toasted bread. Once the recipient stops being pissed off long enough to taste it, they’ll never doubt you again. Make sure you use lots of marshmallow, otherwise they won’t be able to taste that part and you will be SHITTY AT MAKING SANDWICHES.

- A two-terabyte hard drive full of the best internet pornography you have found over the past decade.

- A gift certificate to a brewery that sells growlers so you can stumble around public areas loudly cursing and shouting lines from the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

- A vasectomy. Especially if you live in Superior. It’s like a present for the whole world!

- A burrito you found in the street. If your loved ones don’t like burritos, then perhaps they don’t deserve to be loved. 

- The book I published in 1993, titled “Thomas Friedman: A Mustache’s Tale.”

- The book I published in 1994, titled “Thomas Friedman: Mustache Ahoy!”

- The book I published in 1995, titled “Thomas Friedman: A Litigious Son of a Bitch.”

- Nude photos. Even if you’re just sending them privately, ladies, they’re still a present for me because someday the person you’re dating will stop liking you and upload them to the internet.

- A promise from Minnesota Vikings coach Leslie Frazier that the entire team will be released into free agency at the end of this season, including all the coaches.

- The most valuable thing of all: your friendship. Ironically, your being such a cheap piece of shit will probably make them not want to be your friend anymore.

- Good ideas for column topics, because clearly I’ve run out.