Let's hear it for uncles, those December 23rd, 24th shoppers. Back in those long ago times before smart phones and online shopping and just about everything open on a holiday, the uncles would pull up to the mall about 20 minutes before closing, and they, and a couple hundred other guys, would wing it. Some years if there were a  couple too many parties to stop  by, they'd do their shopping that morning at the only place open, the local news stand.

Christmas would be well underway and they'd pull up with one of those ice cream yule logs or maybe a couple six packs. While the aunts and grandparents knew exactly what it was you wanted it and had searched high and low for it over a series of days and weeks, and jingle and jangled up the presents in wrapping paper and bows, the uncles would have a small paper bag for each kid.

In the bag there might be a Mad magazine or a couple of comics, or some little wry gift that let you know they knew just where you were at that moment. There'd be skinny boxes of pretzels and fistfuls of caps to snap out in the driveway, setting the cats off sprinting for the bushes. They'd have picked out a candy bar and about seven or eight packs of gum.  Chew it all right now if you feel like it, the uncles would say, and you did.