The government’s Christmas mini-budget was just that, very mini. We are assured promised tax cuts will arrive, in due course, while government agencies are told to reduce their budgets by $1.5 billion (around 1% of NZ’s annual government spend). It feels like we may have something taken away with one hand to be returned, with a flourish, in the other. Less healthcare for you but, look, you will pay $10 a week less tax as a result.

Secret Santas can have a similar feel – you go through the process of choosing something good to give to someone else and receive an owl candle or a snow globe. Something you never wanted and will have to dispose of and feel guilty as a result. When Secret Santas are proposed I try to push back … “How about only home-made and/or only edible?” I could add ‘found’ to those possibilities  – I once gave a crescent wrench I found on the road (only slightly dented) as a Secret Santa present and it was received with great enthusiasm.

Pushing back against any festivity tradition can raise accusations of being a grinch. “It’s just fun.” “It’s not much money.” However, the world really doesn’t need a whole lot more snow globes being made, sold or thrown away. The world also doesn’t need a whole lot of wrapping paper consigned to recycling, as I have belatedly realised. Only reusable gift bags from now on. They are a bit disappointing, though – open the bag and the gift is on display, no moments of excitement tearing the paper off to find out what’s inside. It’s hard to figure out where the best trade-offs lie in our era of consumerism.

It turns out snow globes were invented in the late 1800s by an Austrian hoping to create a bright light for use as a surgical lamp. Who’d have guessed? He was trying to increase the brightness created by a water flask (used since the Middle Ages to focus light) by adding reflective particles. The effect reminded him of snowfall so he made the first snow globe using a model of the basilica of Mariazell (a church in south-eastern Austria). Snow globes were so popular the family created a business manufacturing and selling them (Original Vienna Snow Globes). Mr Perzy III now runs the company – it has lasted longer than the original Perzy’s surgical tool business.

Except, according to Snopes, that’s a nice story I just told you but it's not true. Is that the summary of the internet? Snow globes were around for at least twenty years before Perzy created his version – they were described at the Paris Universal Exposition in 1878. And the explosion of snow globe manufacturing, that allows you to receive one in your Secret Santa parcel, occurred in the USA after Joseph Garaja of Pittsburgh developed a method for easily and inexpensively filling snow globes underwater in 1927 (although he applied it to a tropical fish scene paperweight rather than a Christmas scene). The transition from use of glass for snow globes to plastic, in the 1950s, further accelerated their manufacture and uptake. The USA has, of course, gone further and you can now buy inflatable snow globes to put on your front lawn, blowing polystyrene around a Christmas scene.

Whatever you are giving, or receiving this Christmas holiday season. I hope you have a good one. And here’s my light-weight gift – a snow globe story.

CHRISTMAS BREAKOUT

Rudolph taps the curving glass with his hoof. “You really think we should try to break out?”

“Absolutely!” says Pixie 1. “Aren’t you tired of being trapped in this snow globe? I’m ready for a bigger world, even if you’re not. There might be medicine that can fix your nose ...”

Rudolph looks at his reflection in the glass wall. “It’s true I’m tired of my nose, and everyone laughing and singing songs about it. But … ”

Pixie 2 interrupts, “I want other clothes. Look at everyone on the outside, all the different things they wear. I’m so over this green and red suit.”

“Shouldn’t we ask the big guy?” Rudolph says. “It’s his theme, after all.”

“He’s passé,” Pixie 1 says. “No one believes in him anymore and, even if they do, he’s put on too much weight to fit down chimneys.”

A familiar tremor shakes the ground under their feet. “Hang on everyone,” Rudolph says. “Snow’s coming.”

When the blizzard ends, the Pixies shake the snow off the clothes and stamp their feet. “C’mon Rudolph, it’s now or never.”

“What about next week? Why do you need me so badly, anyhow? If you want out, you break the glass.”

“Doh. We don’t have hooves, or strong back legs. We only have striped scarves and boxes to load in a sleigh. Quick, before you’re harnessed up.”

So Rudolph kicks and …