A more sane way might be to jump directly into module-izing the variables. Put this into MyVars.pm somewhere along your @INC path:

package MyVars;
use base Exporter;
@EXPORT = qw($footer $header); # etc
use CGI qw(font); # etc
$footer = font(...);
$header = font(...);
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then in the main code:

use MyVars qw($footer);
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The default will pull in everything from @EXPORT.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker