Sometimes it gets me in trouble, but I often go up to people I don't know well enough and tell them that when they buy my Christmas present, try to stay under $100.

“I know how difficult that is,” I go on, “but I know that somehow you'll manage it.”

It lets me go back to them after Christmas and tell them how successful they were, how they managed to stay so far under the upper limit!

Sometimes, though, it backfires. People have been known to get me something that I have to sit around for hours trying to figure out what to do with it. From these experiences, I've come up with my own golden rule about Christmas gifts: If you don't know what to get somebody, you don't know them well enough to get them anything, so don't.

For a time in my past, I was getting shirts that were the cool and in thing for that particular month. Some of them made decent pajama tops, but finally, I took all of them to a weaver I knew. She ripped them into strips, then wove them with string into placemats for the table. I've still got them, and they're good.

For me, the worst gift ever invented was that cross between a shirt and a jacket. You can wear these things about two weeks in the fall and about four days in April. The rest of the time, they take up needed space in the closet.

This, however, wasn't the worst gift I've ever gotten. That was the dream catcher that was a birch twig tied in a circle with red plastic berries I couldn't name strung haphazardly inside the circle on rawhide. Hanging from the bottom were a few feathers from a Rhode Island Red rooster interspersed with more red plastic beads. I challenge anybody to clean one of these things.

I hung it on the wall, and it has served its purpose. Spiders like to do make-overs on it, which is fine until they start gathering dried flies, but I suppose that's what spiders dream about....

This year, I'm not expecting a lot of gifts, and that's okay. Heating costs being what they are (staying at nearly double what they were last year, when they were high enough), I'd rather people spent money on that than on me.

And it's not just heating costs. There's a group of folks at the University of Pennsylvania who call themselves the Institute for Policy Research. They have tried to do the impossible -- figure out what a living wage really is.

They've developed a “living wage estimator” that is supposed to fit any community in America (Do a search for Poverty in America on the computer.), and the one for Grayson County is a bit depressing.

Estimator looks at monthly expenses for food, child care, medical, housing, transportation and other (which would include Christmas gifts, I suppose).

According to the table, one adult needs to make $9,750 a year after taxes; one adult and one child need $19,301; two adults need $15,044; two adults and one child need $22,666; and two adults and two children need $48,987 a year.

After you take out federal taxes, a per hour living wage in each category would be $5.60; $11.09; $8.64; $13.02 and $16.65.

Estimator lists 22 professions or occupations ranging from management to installation, maintenance and repair (both of which are doing okay around here on the living wage scale) in the categories based on the number of people in the household.

However, when the 22 professions are compared to the minimum wage in the country, all five categories come out on the minus side -- 8 percent, 54 percent, 40 percent, 60 percent and 69 percent below the income they need to buy the basics with a little left over for “other.”

There are all kinds of ideas here for what to get somebody for Christmas. If a family of four is really spending $570 a month on groceries, a basket of staples with a red bow would be pretty welcome under any Christmas tree.

And don't forget health care. It's a big budget item for every category and getting bigger as insurance coverage shrinks coverage. Dip into “other” and buy somebody's child an eye, hearing or blood sugar test. Get the adults one, too.

Pay somebody's heat bill for January, or the part of it that's made it double what it was last year. A tune-up and oil change in the transportation category would be well received.

Oh, the part about keeping my gifts under the $100 limit... Forget it. According to Estimator, I'm doing okay except for the medical part, but, as my doctor always tells me, all these allergies and sinus problems are the price you pay for living in this beautiful, albeit mouldy state.

I'm just kidding about the gifts, anyway. I don't need another dream catcher, and I have four shirt-jackets!