This annual event is an homage to Charles Dickens.

Once the holiday season has worn off, we look with a cold, jaundiced eye at the gifts which the season has produced.

• Some are positively delightful.
• Some are socially appropriate/mandatory, considering that we want to have a reasonably cordial business/family relationship with this guy/gal until next December.
• And some are the ... um ... "other" which commercialism forces upon us.

Bah! Humbug! is a celebration of the "... um ... other".

So, bring that really tacky gift to this party. Wrap it so as to conceal its true nature. Realize, with a sinking heart, that you're going to have to take home a similarly tacky gift. (Heck, very likely even tackier.) Be prepared to hear the story (not fit for the ears of children) of what happened to the lady who decided not to take her even-tackier gift home. Or, at least, to the nearest dumpster.

The Purple Fish

For reasons lost in the mists of time (ask a truly old-timer, if there are any still left), the ultimately tacky gift is The Purple Fish. It's glass, about a foot long, and perhaps was once intended to be a wall-hanging.

Or perhaps not.

Anyway, this particular gift is so tacky that's its only possible use is to be brought back to next year's Bah! Humbug! party. (There are many other similarly recycled gifts, but this one is the first among equals. No, it's just the first.) The bane, the doom, of the recipient of The Purple Fish is that he has to host the party the following year.

It is therefore a social imperative that this year's host:

• line up the following year's host, well in advance; and
• ensure, by hook or by crook, that The Purple Fish gets awarded to the right person.

Considerable social esteem is awarded to a host whose hook and/or crook is more imaginative than has been the case over the last few years. Perhaps the actual glass fish is replaced with a matchbox containing a slip of paper upon which is written, "The Purple Fish". Perhaps it is packed, in Styrofoam pellets, in a box which once contained a 30-inch computer monitor. Perhaps it is more diabolically concealed even than that.

In line with the theme of the party, a really tacky Christmas tree is often set up in the host's living room. It appears to have been (and perhaps actually was) rescued from the city dump a year or more ago, and is decorated with [I'm sorry; I can't go on].

Some hosts collect a modest door charge. Some make the party a potluck. Some fund it themselves, so as to gain additional social esteem. Whatever. As the possessor of The Purple Fish, you wield enormous power. Do what seems right.