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This American Life

255: Our Holiday Gift-Giving Guide

This American Life

This American Life

News, Society & Culture, Arts

4.688.8K Ratings

🗓️ 14 December 2025

⏱️ 60 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The vexing difficulty of finding the perfect gift.

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  • Prologue: Host Ira Glass goes to a busy Target store one week before Christmas. Most shoppers he talks to don't think any of their gifts will be returned. (3 minutes)
  • Act One: Ian Brown tries, after decades of failure, to give his mother the perfect Christmas gift. He and his brother attempt something they haven't done since they were kids: Rehearse and sing her a program of Christmas carols. (19 minutes)
  • Act Two: We play a 1959 original recording of Truman Capote reading his holiday story A Christmas Memory. (18 minutes)
  • Act Three: Caitlin Shetterly reports on a true-life holiday fable from rural Maine, complete with a misunderstood recluse with a heart of gold, a deserving family in need, and a very special Christmas tree farm with secrets of its own. (16 minutes)

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Transcript

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0:00.0

One week before Christmas, the Target store on Chicago's West Side, middle of the day,

0:04.9

people are rolling shopping carts full of toys and games through the aisles,

0:08.0

teenagers and single people, parents from every income.

0:11.3

And I don't really understand this, but if you talk to them, it's incredibly diverse group.

0:16.7

There's one question that always seems to get exactly the same answer.

0:25.6

Of all these things that you have in this basket, what do you think is the most likely to get returned? Actually, uh, none of it.

0:28.6

Not my stuff.

0:30.6

No, I'd say no, not mine.

0:32.6

Actually, I'm not worth at all. Actually, I did a pretty good job.

0:36.6

The majority of the stuff that I'm buying is really for my kids,

0:39.4

so they definitely ain't going to return anything.

0:42.1

So, uh, not my stuff.

0:44.6

Yeah, I made a list of what I was getting everyone in.

0:48.2

Pretty confident in it.

0:53.9

When I report their bravado, their confidence to the store manager Lee Krum, this is his response.

1:02.8

Well, the day after Christmas is the busiest day in refunds.

1:08.0

So I don't know how true that statement is, nobody ever returns

1:11.6

my gifts. So they just, you know, of course everybody has sunglasses and rubber noses on that day

1:17.0

and when they're returning stuff, so nobody sees them. It's really funny when the media's

1:19.9

here the day after Christmas and they're filming the return center, everybody's kind of like,

1:23.9

he hides his face behind his arm. Nobody wants their picture taken. Like criminals.

1:27.4

Yes. He hides his face behind his arm. Nobody wants their picture taken. Like criminals.

...

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