Jigsaw puzzles are a terrible, rotten, no good, very bad gift.

In this holiday season, please remember this one important fact when choosing a gift for a friend or loved one:

Giving your loved one the gift of a jigsaw puzzle is like giving that person a purposeless, meaningless chore best suited for someone who idolizes Sisyphus.

Jigsaw puzzles are ridiculous. Take an oftentimes lovely picture, break it into hundreds of pieces, and expect your loved one to re-assemble it into something less lovely than the original.

What a jerky thing to do. 

And once it's complete?

Stare at it for a few moments (even though the image is already on the box), break it into hundreds of pieces again, and put it away until the next time your loved one is hell bent on accomplishing nothing. 

It's a terrible gift.

Why not just tear a sheet of paper into a hundred pieces and ask your loved one to re-assemble it? Or break a plate? Or invite your loved one to twiddle his or her thumbs for an hour or two?

These pursuits seem just as entertaining to me as assembling a jigsaw puzzle. 

Granted, my opinion may be slightly clouded by the fact that I have great difficulty assembling jigsaw puzzles, but I suspect that I would hate them regardless of my prowess. 

Putting stuff that someone has purposely broken back together has never struck me as terribly amusing.