Gifts for those with more money than sense

BRIAN LENIHAN may be planning to cancel Christmas when he dons his Scrooge suit next week, but the country that brought us the credit crunch is still insisting we at least fantasise about bulging stockings.

For while banks combust, stocks plummet and dole queues snake like garlands around a Noble Fir, the always reliable Neiman Marcus depart- ment store chain has published its always extravagant Christmas 2008 catalogue.

This is the American crowd who in previous years offered such helpful gift ideas as personal submarines, adult tree- houses, space flights and his and hers portraits painted in chocolate.

This year, while the rest of us talk recession and how to endure it, Neiman Marcus is talking impression and how to make it. It suggests a custom-made back-garden miniature golf course designed by Jack Nicklaus for a mere million dollars, or €733,000 if you must know.

Alternatively, you can slide an 11th century ring on your sweetheart’s finger or gift wrap a titanium motorbike.

Prices range from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands, but what you lose in noughts, you gain in well-placed air kisses.

And if money really is no object, what about a $10 million package from the home of US horse-racing, Kentucky. This includes the creation of a stable of a dozen thoroughbreds which will be trained, housed and raced under silks of your own design for the next four years.

For the more homely, a modest spend of $250,000 will get you what Neiman Marcus vice president of public relations Ginger Reeder describes as an “authentic Guinness home pub”.

“We will build you a traditional Irish pub in your rec room [recreation room] if you like, full with a year’s worth of Guinness stout,” she smiled gently, as if coaxing a forgetful senior to accept meals on wheels.

Unfortunately, even dreaming costs money, as the catalogue costs $15. But then it has been fuelling fantasies every year since 1926 — including those of Neiman Marcus itself, which, in the rush towards diamond baubles and ribbons of real gold, seems to be glossing over the fact that the stores made a loss of $35.6 million this year.