Years ago I had a friend whose father shopped the local drugstore on Christmas Eve (and I mean Eve, like 7 to 9 PM) every year for all his gifts. The following morning, many wonders would be found under the tree: dental floss, aspirin, shoe odor-defeating inserts, breath mints...to name but a few. Most reviled was the gift of a bar of soap, typically the kind on discontinued item sale, smelling a bit like ancient gym locker room and sporting more exotic chemicals than are found in many snack foods. Sadly, I thus appropriated the misguided notion that giving soap at the holidays is a no-no that suggests a paucity of both funds and imagination. Foolish, foolish - soap can be a fantastic gift (and stocking stuffer) when the soap is hand-stirred slowly and carefully, made with loads of skin-caressing natural glycerin, and infused with rapturous scents (like pure lavender; baked apples and cream; clove cinnamon bay; kookaburra eucalyptus); these are the traits of soaps from Sweet Grass Farm, a small producer of natural soaps in New Hampshire. Their Soap Gift Set includes 2 all-natural, hand cut 4 oz. soaps in a variety of fragrances, and it makes a terrific stocking stuffer, hostess gift, birthday gift, teacher's gift - you just can't go wrong. For you? Try one of their all-vegetable oil Milled Bar Soaps (milled in the French tradition) for a little well-deserved post-holiday-craziness luxury.