Hitting Right Chord With Yule Gifts : Musical Instruments, Toy Animals Among Holiday Ideas

The tradition of giving gifts at Christmas began nearly 2,000 years ago when the Christ child received the gifts of the Magi.

Among those gifts, according to legend, was a rude reed pipe made by a shepherd.

Today, musical presents are available for every age group, experience level and budget, says the American Music Conference, which estimates more than 57 million Americans are playing some kind of instrument.

“A musical gift should strike a responsive chord with nearly everyone in the holiday season,” notes a spokesman for the industry association.

“When selecting instruments for children, scaled-down real instruments should be chosen rather than toys. Real instruments help children develop an ‘ear’ for correct tones, as well as physical coordination and proper breathing--for wind instruments--which will be helpful when they begin instrument study.”

Other suggestions for musical gift-giving include:

--Several months’ rental on an instrument for that person who “always wanted to play,” and a set of lessons or self-instruction aids and sheet music.

--Some sheet music or a book of arrangements by the composer or singer whom your musical friends and relatives most admire.

--For the electronically minded, a synthesizer or electronic keyboard with its “plugged-in” sound, which reproduces realistic instrumental sounds.

--A piano, the most popular instrument--which can start at around $1,000--as a gift for the entire family.

“It may not fit under the tree,” says the association, “but you can be sure it will be the first gift unwrapped.”

With a new line of plush toy animals, a San Francisco manufacturer has joined with the World Wildlife Fund-U.S. to help preserve some of the most threatened species alive in the wild.

The toys include replicas of the mountain gorilla, giant panda, snow leopard, elephant, tiger, grizzly bear, orangutan, blue whale and polar bear. Priced from $16 to $72--a portion of which goes to the wildlife fund--they are available in department and gift stores throughout the United States.

“Educating children about the need for conservation is extremely important,” says Russell E. Train, president of the fund. “And using a medium like these adorable toy animals should not only interest them, but encourage them to care.”

Each animal carries a medallion of the fund’s panda logo and a booklet describing the animal and its current status in the wild.

Lifelike, three-dimensional animals are the theme of a needlepoint collection available in time for holiday gift-giving.

In the menagerie that can be worked either as a stuffed animal soft-sculpture or flat frameable canvas are a panda, a raccoon, a rabbit, a bulldog, a Yorkshire terrier, a pig, a cow, a hen and a couple of cats.

The kits include a hand-painted design, wool yarn and detailed, color-keyed instruction sheet.

(“A Dragon’s Tale,” Box 559, Cathedral Station, New York, N.Y. 10025.)

For an offbeat and unusual stocking-stuffer, how about a compact series of outside-of-the-classroom lessons?

Called “Extra Credit,” the lessons are designed to help youngsters with the basics in education. The lessons are the creation of four award-winning Chicago-area teachers. They can be used at home, on vacations or whenever a child is absent from the classroom.

Available at the primary, intermediate and junior high school levels, the packages--on 5 1/2-by-8 1/2-inch cards--include lessons in language arts, mathematics, science, social studies and reading. Each level contains 10 days of work, with each day taking two to four hours to complete.

(“Extra Credit” packages may be ordered for $19.95 from Pennin Inc., P.O. Box 284, Skokie, Ill. 60076.)

Colorful “smell and scratch” stickers may take a place alongside the traditional peppermint candy canes for kids who hang up their stockings at Christmas.

As explained by a spokesman for the Mello Smello Factory in Minneapolis, the stickers coated with millions of tiny smell cells will last at least six months. They come in such flavors as orange, strawberry and grape, as well as pizza, tacos, popcorn and peanut butter.

Some young collectors keep their stickers in albums or “swapper” books as well as on lunch boxes, bedroom walls, jackets, hats and bumpers of the family car.

For the practical-minded, a smoke alarm ornament to minimize the hazard of Christmas tree fires is offered in the gift catalogue of Hammacher Schlemmer & Co. for $34.95. The duel-ionization chamber ornament sounds an 85-decibel alarm upon detecting as little as 0.5% smoke in the air.

Suggestions in the “Girl-Who-Has-Everything” department include L’air D’or perfume with flakes of 23-karat gold suspended in the bottle, which retails at $275 an ounce.

For someone looking for an unusual gift--and has a cool $2 million to spend--there is a pair of diamonds offered as a his-and-her gift in this year’s Nieman-Marcus catalogue.

According to the Texas-based store’s description, “no known collection other than the Crown Jewels of England includes two finished diamonds of this magnitude, cut from a single rough.

One is a rectangular, starburst-cut 56-carat gem, while its mate is a 21-carat pear-shape jewel.

With videocassette recorders now in nearly one out of every three American homes, blank and prerecorded tapes are stocking-stuffers that fill a wide range of tastes.

“You can please a homebound grandmother, a finicky ‘videophile’ or a Madonna-mad teen-ager in one trip to the store,” says Bob Burnett of Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Co. Burnett cautions that the first thing the gift-giver needs to know is whether the recipient has a VHS or Beta VCR. The two formats are not compatible.

Some videotapes are specially designed for high-quality music recording, for home movie-making and for building a personal film library, whereas standard-grade cassettes are most commonly used for recording a program off television for one-time viewing, Burnett says.