Our Holiday Gift-Giving Guide

December 14, 2025·1 hr 1 min·5 clips

Two grown men stand in sub-zero cold, singing carols to a closed door, begging for their mother's approval.

The tape begins one week before Christmas. At a Target on Chicago's west side, shoppers push carts packed with toys and games, then answer one question with almost suspicious agreement. Nobody thinks their gifts are coming back. Parents, teenagers, single people, and shoppers across incomes all insist they have chosen well. Lee Crum knows how this goes. The store manager says the day after Christmas is the busiest day for refunds, then jokes that people making returns should show up in sunglasses and rubber noses. The confidence is funny because it is so doomed. It opens the gap between how giving feels before Christmas and what happens after the wrapping comes off. Then the mood turns. The excerpt moves into a remembered holiday errand, slow and vivid, with a log cabin by the muddy river and moss hanging like gray mist. Queenie stops prancing. The children near Ha Ha's cafe, a place wrapped in stories of violence, and their bravery nearly dies at the door. Mr. Ha Ha Jones appears. He has scars, does not smile, and asks what they want with enough menace to freeze them. Their request is small. They need a quart of his finest whiskey, not to drink, but to make fruitcakes. That changes the room. He hears about the cakes, gives back their nickels, dimes, and pennies, and asks them to send him one. Fear loosens into affection. On the walk home, the friend decides he is lovely and deserves extra raisins. Then the kitchen takes over. Coal and firewood glow, beaters and spoons work through butter and sugar, and vanilla and ginger fill the house. Thirty-one cakes are made. By the end, the holiday feeling is not tidy generosity. It is the stranger warmth of a feared person asking to be included.

As heard by us

A Target return-counter comedy gives way to a whiskey fruitcake story with a strange, tender holiday edge.

The episode starts at a Target on Chicago's west side, a week before Christmas, where shoppers sound fully convinced that everything in their carts is staying put. Store manager Lee Crum knows better.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Your holiday shopping confidence is about to take a gentle, extremely well-observed hit.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from This American Life