The Gift of Laughter

Batteries are never included with the Gift of Laughter. Furthermore, there are many small parts in the Gift of Laughter that maybe hazardous for children and present a risk of choking. It is rare and expensive, too, as any gift worth giving always is. In fact, these days you often have to special order the Gift of Laughter from obscure corners of the globe. Thank God for the internet!
Your toothless aunt in Tallahassee may have given you a Gift of Laughter for Christmas last year, but, although she means well, it was the wrong kind. Obviously your mother needs to be more specific when describing the Gift of Laughter over the phone to senile relatives. Surely even she knows that any cartoon book featuring an overweight tortoise called Herb who wears a baseball cap and greasy dungerees is certainly not what you asked for. This Gift of Laughter is a gift you will definitely want to re-gift, possibly as a tax-deductible donation to your local lunatic asylum's library. Here it can be enjoyed by chronic depressives as they wander along the endless, sterile corridors in their dressing gowns and slippers, smirking mysteriously to themselves.
Indeed, any paperback book marked "humor" is more a gift of desperation than a Gift of Laughter. This is because the Gift of Laughter in printed form is now regarded as "literature," much like music is now called "classical music."