Several questions come to blogger Abigail Perry’s mind when she sees one of those commercials with a car in the driveway topped by a big bow. You know -- where the wife goes outside and there it sits, all nice and pretty.

Abby (the daughter of MSN Money "Living With Less" columnist Donna Freedman) wonders how the car got there without the wife noticing. Did they bring it in the middle of the night? Did they check with the husband to make sure she’s asleep? “Does that mean the husband gets a walkie-talkie and gets to say things like ‘The bear is in hibernation’ and ‘Roger’ and ‘Over’?” Abby writes at I Pick Up Pennies.

OK, that’s the silly stuff. But Abby also raises some good questions. Is a car really an appropriate holiday present? No, she says, and here’s why not -- from the hypothetical wife’s point of view:

This guest post comes from Frank Curmudgeon at Bad Money Advice.

We are now in what we Americans call the Holiday Season. And it is a season: not just one holiday, but a joyous period in which every day is special. A few of those days don’t have names yet, but I am sure that in time that gap in our culture will be filled.

Here’s a rundown of the next week or so.

The traditional fun begins with Travel Nightmare Wednesday. Observed the day before the last Thursday in November, this holiday is celebrated around the nation by crowding into planes and spending quality time with loved ones inside cars crawling along interstates.

Then comes Thanksgiving, when we solemnly thank the Almighty for football and giant balloons in the shape of cartoon characters. Some families also give thanks that once again they deep fried the turkey without burning the house down.

• Video: How to score the best deals on Black Friday

Things pick up a bit with Black Friday, a holiday that celebrates the simple pleasures of buying stuff. Traditionally, it is observed by talking about how everybody else is going to the mall that day and recounting how it is traditionally the busiest shopping day of the year. It is not, nor has it ever been. That honor usually goes to Most Busy Saturday, which falls this year on Dec. 19.

This guest post comes from “vh” at Funny about Money.

How lucky we are. How incredibly lucky we are to have been born when we were born and where we were born.

Every now and again, I cruise the Web looking for my grandparents and great-grandparents, whom I never saw and about whom I know only some tantalizing hand-me-down legends. Because the pool of public records online grows deeper with each passing day, occasionally I come across something new.

• Video: The '00s -- a 'decade from hell'

The other night, what should I find but the 1900 census records listing my father’s parents, living way to hell and gone out in some godforsaken patch of east-central Texas. My father was not yet a proverbial twinkle, but both of his brothers had come into being in the early 1890s.

This post comes from James Limbach at partner site ConsumerAffairs.com.

The recall of more than 2.1 million Stork Craft drop-side cribs, including about 147,000 Stork Craft drop-side cribs with the Fisher-Price logo, is just the latest in a series of actions involving cribs this year.

In January, Stork Craft announced the recall of more than 500,000 cribs. And this summer, Simplicity announced it was recalling more than 500,000 cribs.

• Bing: Other kids’ product recalls

As part of the most recent recall, involving about 1.21 million units distributed in the United States and 968,000 units distributed in Canada, the Consumer Product Safety Commission is urging parents and caregivers to stop using the recalled cribs immediately, wait for the free repair kit that converts the drop side on these cribs to a fixed side, and not to attempt to fix the cribs without the kit. The recalled cribs have been linked to four deaths.

It also is advising parents to find an alternative, safe sleeping environment for their baby.

However, obtaining the repair kit has not been easy for everyone.