Andy Rooney's take on Christmas
We've all been there. Handed a nicely wrapped gift, we tear open the paper and find a hideous necktie or stinky perfume, the type of present we want to hand right back. Most of us are too polite to show our disappointment, but not Andy Rooney. In the 1983 video above, the late 60 Minutes correspondent showed off some of his least favorite gifts of Christmases past.
He never used the apple-peeler he once received, for instance. "Seems to work pretty good, but why would I want to peel an apple?" he said. And no more chess sets, please. "I already have five chess sets, and I only play chess once every three years," he said.
He also didn't want another pen-and-pencil set, cricket bat, jigsaw, automatic shoe-shiner or any more candy. "Everyone has some things he or she doesn't want for Christmas. Make a list," he advised. "Give it to your friends and family."
Rooney also had a lot to say about the way gifts are wrapped. "Wrapping Christmas presents is nice, but it's a strange custom," he said in the 1985 segment above. "Why is it that we get more pleasure from giving, or getting, a present that's temporarily concealed from our eyes than from one that isn't?"
To investigate, he visited the now-defunct Gimbels department store in midtown Manhattan to see how the professionals wrap Christmas presents. He was disappointed to learn that they charge for the service. "If you bring the gift back, do you get the money back that it cost you?" he asked woman behind the counter. "Oh, no!" she laughed. "No refund on gift wrapping."
Rooney also questioned the old adage that the best things come in small packages. "I'm not sure that's true," he said. "I like the presents that come in big packages myself."
If a gift does come wrapped, he added, don't unwrap it neatly. "We had an aunt who always came to our house for Christmas. I liked her, but she always unwrapped her presents very carefully and then saved the paper," he said. "That's wrong. The wrapping on a Christmas present should be torn off and thrown on the floor. It's part of the decoration Christmas morning."
By his own admission, Andy Rooney wasn't the type to stay quiet if something was not to his liking. In the 1988 video above, he brought up hockey great Wayne Gretzky, who once said that if he orders his steak rare and it comes well-done, he eats it anyway. "Well, I don't eat it," Rooney said. "I complain. I make sure the waiter knows I'm not happy about it, and I figure the waiter will let the chef know. I think of my complaint as a public service."
But at Christmas time, Rooney said, he's more like Gretzky. "I take what's given to me," he said. "I've had Christmas presents I liked better than others, but I've never had a Christmas present I didn't like."
The man known for his often caustic take on American traditions was surprisingly soft on the holidays. "For the biggest part of the year, we're battling our friends and battling our enemies, we're competing with everyone in an effort to get ahead of them," he said. "Everything we do is for some reason we think makes sense. We think it'll be good for us."
Then Christmas comes along, he explained, and all that scheming falls by the wayside. "For this one wonderful day, we set aside our skepticism, we set aside our competitiveness. We set aside our ability to make logical decisions to get ourselves ahead in the world. And we just hang around all day and love each other."
Happy holidays from 60 Minutes.