By Monica Hesse
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 22, 2007

The Thing, the Thing, the Christmas Thing!

The Thing that appears in Sunday circulars and in great stacks just inside the main entrance of the Bed Bath & Beyond or the Tar- zhay each December. The Thing that is utilized in holiday kitchens for slicing and dicing and icing and spicing -- and oh it's so nice-ing -- before falling to the rear of your cupboard, behind the Rubbermaid lids.

The Thing is spontaneously purchased with the best of intentions. It usually costs $39.99 or less, well within the comfort zone for spontaneity of this sort.

This year's Things include: The caramel apple dipper. The Wilton cookie press. The Laroma hot chocolate maker, piled in a 48-box pyramid in the home section of Macy's at Metro Center. Your Choice, the signs surrounding it say, as if you and the Laroma selected each other a long time ago, even if you don't remember doing so.

A couple of years ago, the Thing was the portable chocolate fountain. A "must-have for holiday parties," ad copy read. You'd seen the big ones at weddings, at bat mitzvahs, at nondenominational office winter gatherings. At last, you could bring that melty goodness home -- put it on a platter with marshmallows and poundcake and other dippables. It was good for a Christmas party or two, and good for those secret times afterward when the dippables were gone but, by God, your fingers were not.

And after that? Well, how much melted chocolate does a body really need, anyway?

To the cupboard it went, another ghost of your Christmas past.

Down at the Pentagon City Linens 'n Things, the Thing this year is the Primula Flowering Tea pot. The Primula Flowering Tea pot is a clear glass pot paired with a 12-pack of Hobbity-looking tubers. When steeped in hot water, each tuber blossoms into a beautiful flower, turning water into tea, sustenance into art. "We can't keep them on the shelves," says James Franklin, a Linens 'n Things employee.

A lot of the buyers of the Flowering Tea pot tell Franklin they do not drink tea, flowering or otherwise. They just think it looks nice, he says. As he says that a pair of ladies walk past it and quietly say, "Ooooh."

This season Franklin has also seen a rabid and explosive interest in the AeroGarden (with "NASA-proven, high-yield aeroponic technology") and in the five-bottle deluxe lighted liquor carousel, with spigots that emit a soft glow.

Perfect for holiday entertaining, Franklin says.

Things with alcohol are popular this year, says Judy Newman, the housewares and appliances buyer for Rodman's, the District-based gourmet food and home store. Rodman's does not carry the liquor carousel, however. "It's great for if you're opening a discotheque," Newman says. "But I feel a responsibility to my customers and I'd feel bad about selling them something really goofy."

Whaddya do with a five-bottle deluxe lighted liquor carousel once the holidays are over?

But the little voice of reason that should ask that question instead leads you straight toward the powdered-sugar doughnut maker (a big Thing this year at JCPenney) when you're out and shopping.

Like buying jeans a size too small or investing in a Rosetta Stone course in Dutch, the holiday Thing is a promise to your future self. You will entertain more. You will AeroPress your own coffee, mild in the morning, espresso at night! Homemade funnel cakes will become a year-round thing. Waffle cookies for everyone!

That's what Ramona Padovano was thinking earlier this month when she purchased the VillaWare Quattro nonstick pizzelle press. The blogger for DCFoodies.com was already "cranking out biscotti like there's no tomorrow," when she decided that the wafer-thin Italian cookie would be a nice addition to her edible Christmas gifts. Suddenly the pizzelle press was a deep and pervasive necessity.

While she hopes to use it throughout the year, she can make no promises. "A few years ago I bought one of those gingerbread house kits that were so popular," says Padovano. "I really thought we'd make it. We didn't." Last week, she admitted defeat. "The day I finally got rid of that gingerbread kit was a wonderful release."

Often the Things of years past are released in the general direction of Joyce Fitzgerald, who volunteers with the Opportunity Shop, a thrift store affiliated with St. Alban's Episcopal Church, and is known to other volunteers as "the object goddess." Things arrive in garbage bags, or sometimes in original packaging, at the shop's front door. "We get three or four fondue sets a month, especially after Christmas," she says. "Sometimes we get stuff and I don't even know what the stuff is."

Like the metal rack she figured must have been some sort of toast-holder. A colleague guessed it was for drying sponges.

The Opportunity Shop also accepts the Things of yesteryear -- the things that were once Things but are now due for Crate & Barrel upgrades: a parade of hand-cranked apple peelers, and garlic presses, and French press coffeemakers. "I think," volunteer Helen Eisenberg says, "people must be going back to percolating," but that's just because she hasn't seen the AeroPresses yet.

The Things, the Things, the Christmas Things! Riddled with guilt, and optimism, and smelling faintly of cinnamon potpourri, they wait for someone to discover them again, to brew a cup of flowering tea and then say, "Mmm, tastes like Christmas 2007."