PICTURE IT: YOU’RE getting ready to tuck into a therapeutic cocktail with that friend you’ve been putting off for months. You take a deep breath and prepare to launch into an exhausted tirade about how much the holidays bite, how little money you have these days, and how pooped you are. But before you have a pleasant buzz on, your friend executes the dreaded Surprise Gifting. "Here’s a little something for you," she drawls expectantly, eyes glued to your face.

And there you are, sheepish, slurping, and empty-handed.

Angela Baker, a 25-year-old architect in Somerville, says it’s an all-too-familiar scenario for her. She recalls a time when an eager and generous "peripheral friend" whipped a little something out of her bag, surprising her with an unexpected gift. "It sucked," she says. But Baker saved herself. "I just lied and said I had something for her at home," she laughs. And then she scrambled to "scrounge up something after the fact."

It’s fairly easy to pull off the lie part, but what about that last-minute dash to reciprocate? "The key," Baker muses, "is to find something that they can use — even if it’s not really what they wanted."

Baker’s last-minute staple is usually scented bath soaps, "at least if it’s a girl." To add a little twist to the oh-so-common gift, O & Co., Newbury Street’s mecca of all things olive oil, sells a square wooden box filled with two bars of olive-oil soap, a kitchen towel, and a tube of olive-oil hand cream ($48).

Another option is to grab a spare bottle of wine and decorate it: tie some of those twinkly balls attached to sparkly elastic — technically called "wine charms" — to the neck of the bottle. Find dress-’em-up doodads for next to nothing at your corner store. And Cambridge’s Wine and Cheese Cask will throw a bottle in a silvery bag or a white box for an added handful of change. Voilà! Saved.

A festive mug can also make laziness look like well-intentioned generosity. In Cambridge, 30 artists show their ceramic wares on the shelves at the Mudflat Gallery for prices ranging from $10 to $25. They’re wide-lipped, solid, and useful enough that you can’t go wrong with a friend you know little about. He or she at least drinks, right?

Snazzy paper is another solid, wonderfully bland option. Who doesn’t need paper? Paper Source stocks an olive-green lined notebook with palm-reading instructions on the cover ($11.88). Inspect it closely before you give it away; maybe it’ll help you avoid similar situations next time. Paper Source also sells sets of handmade muted-white-paper cards with envelopes in see-through pea green ($8.50), opaque olive ($5.50), or shimmery silver ($6). Why not set your friend up with paper on which to craft a thank-you note for your thoughtfulness and foresight?

Where to get it:

• Mudflat Gallery, 34 White Street in Porter Square shopping complex (next to CVS), Cambridge, (617) 491-7976.

• O & Co., 161 Newbury Street, Boston, (617) 859-8841.

• Paper Source, 1810 Mass Ave, Cambridge, (617) 497-1077; 1361 Beacon Street, Brookline, (617) 264-2800.

• Wine and Cheese Cask, 407 Washington Street, Somerville, (617) 623-8656.

Issue Date: December 20 - 27, 2001

Back to the News and Features table of contents.