Hitchcock's McGuffin story possibly derived from a story about an imaginary mongoose

[Jonathan Lighter]

Victor is absolutely right.  In my childhood (Holy crap! It was closer to
1925 than to today!) gifts frequently made their appearance days or even a
couple of weeks before Christmas Day and were routinely tagged "Do Not Open
Before Xmas!" The reason was that they were in addition to the gifts that
Santa would bring, which you couldn't possibly open before, say, 12:05 am in
the Day itself, because they hadn't arrived yet.

JL
On Wed, Oct 27, 2010 at 11:57 PM, Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Hitchcock's McGuffin story possibly derived from a story
>              about an imaginary mongoose
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> My assumption all along was that this was meant to apply to random gifts
> given at disproportionately early times relative to the Xmas season. So,
> if someone gives you a gift in August and tells you that it's your Xmas
> present and not to be opened until Xmas, that's a McGuffin.
>
>     VS-)
>
> On 10/27/2010 8:22 PM, Garson O'Toole wrote:
> > Jonathan Lighter wrote
> >> Surely "McGuffin" never really "meant" a "gift not to be opened till
> >> Christmas" to any statistically significant number of people.
> > The definition of McGuffin provided by Robert Haven Schauffler seems
> > odd to me. In my cultural experience as a child and as an adult gift
> > giver almost all gifts during the Christmas season were supposed to be
> > opened on Christmas day. Thus almost all gifts would be labeled
> > McGuffin's. Using a distinctive sounding appellation to designate a
> > gift opened according to a commonplace protocol might be an impediment
> > to adoption.
>
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