Yaks are the new goats

This year, it's all about the yaks.

Last Christmas it was the idea of sending someone a goat that captured the imagination of the novelty-loving middle class. Charity gifts are so last year, so the only way forward is to make the gifts more quirky. Which charity can come up with the most random novelty animal to 'send' to some needy person?It's a dangerous game. I can foresee a situation in two or three years time when confused Saharan tribesmen will be receiving sweaty penguins, or UNICEF workers will be knocking on igloo doors (do igloos have doors?) to deliver pairs of iguanas, and Ukrainian orphans will be getting little boxes of ladybirds in the post.

Eventually of course, we'll actually swamp the third world with random animals. By February I expect Tanzania will be so full of goats they'll have a 'send a goat back' campaign. Or maybe they'll get tired of being patronised and they'll have their revenge. People could send a mosquito or a batch of weevils, or maybe purchase a 'famine experience pack', where you pay for someone to go round and remove all the food from someone's house on Christmas day.

I'm being facetious, of course, although there is an interesting social point her somewhere. In the west we have everything, but we can't be seen to be keeping all our money for ourselves. We want to buy presents, but the old 'what do you get for the man who has everything' line is practically a universal now. So we've developed two very clear strategies.

The first is the ironic gift. You get your friends something silly. Witness the sudden opening of Gadget Shop outlets right around Christmas, and their subsequent closure in January - poor taste items, toys for adults, gimmicks and joke commodities. Ironic gifts are wrong, and I don't mean wrong in the ironic, funny, 'that's so wrong!' way. I mean they actually are wrong.

And we know this, we know they're tokenistic, wasteful, and only fun for an average of 1.2 seconds. Which is why the second category has been so popular - charity gifts, and they're magic. Money is spent, and nobody is upset that you didn't get them anything, and everyone can laugh when you open it. Unlike the ironic gift, which is likely to be inflatable or need batteries, it won't clutter up the house and leave your friends with the moral quandary of wanting to throw it away, but feeling bad because it was a present. And, best of all, it's virtuous. It makes us feel great, because we're saving the world.

Buying charity gifts makes you a good person in so many ways.They may be one of those little things that I find awkward about living in Britain, like fairtrade goods and the 'red' credit card, but overall, I think I'm favour of charity gifts.

Of course not everyone needs a yak, so you can still send a goat if you like, or cow, sheep, chicken, alpaca, camel, donkey, pig, even a can of worms, each with their own awful sales tagline. 'Send a duck, what a quacking idea', being one the more horrific. If you factor in the sponsorship gifts you can have a baby vulture, or more exotically an elephant, a rhino, or a tiger. Or a lemur. (a quick hooray for lemurs) Or if animals aren't your thing, there are plenty of other things to send, from sheds or handfuls of nails, mosquito nets, wells, entire playgrounds, bikes, seeds, or the rather dubious 'Send a bog'.Although my personal favourite remains the RSPB's 'sponsor a hedge' - the gift that goes on and on, apparently. You'll all be getting hedges from me this year.

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