As a child, Christmas meant good food, especially nuts and chocolate, lots of presents, and party games. We often played “hunt the thimble,” and sometimes the thimble was hidden behind my father’s pile of brown paper wrapped, unopened BMJs.

By 1975 I was married with three children. Our Christmases still involved fine food and presents but my wife had become a thimble collector and instead of hunting the thimble I was “gifting the thimble.” Over the next years, as I travelled to meetings and conferences, I had the opportunity to seek thimbles out from all over the world, and over time I too became interested in them. I have devoted my retirement to the hobby of thimble collecting and thought that, as a surgeon, close to Christmas, it might be interesting to review the use of the humble thimble in surgical practice.