Today, as my thoughts turn to starting Christmas shopping, a tale of the most disconcerting Christmas gift I ever received. /1

It must have been 1996. My fiance -- now my wife -- were engaged, not yet married. Two of her grandparents, of honored memory, lived proximately. /2

Her grandparents never entirely approved of me. Were they shrewd? Was it a function of not-good-enough-for-our-girl? The fact we were living together? I'll never know. /3

At any rate, they always seemed skeptical of me, and I was always uneasy and awkward around them. More so, I mean. /4

So that Christmas of distant past, of an era of Clintons and hammer pants, they gave me a Christmas present. It was in a box carefully labeled "To Ed." /5

At this point I must pause and remind readers that my name is not, in fact, Ed. Not that there is anything wrong with Ed as a name. There have been fine Eds, I am certain. /6

I opened the gift. Inside was a large leather wallet -- not wallet-sized, but portfolio-sized, the length and width of a running shoe. /7

Upon the wallet was prominently embossed a large and perturbingly anatomically detailed bison. /8

The bison was not merely presented in all of its appendages. The bison appeared to be having a, shall we say, a Personal Moment. /9

This Means Something, I thought. /10

I smiled, and thanked them graciously, as I had been taught. No grandparent could fault my response. /11

But even now - decades letter -- the enormous and visibly erect wallet-bison troubles me, as such things tend to do. /12

Was it a threat? Ridicule? A comment on my taste or lack thereof? Incipient dementia? An artifact of the essential weirdness and brokenness of all humanity? /13

And that is the tale of the most disconcerting Christmas present I ever got, and the reason that I tend to pause when people ask me things like "what do Christmas carols remind you of?" Because it's the bison erection. Definitely the bison erection. /14