Giving Gifts
Penguin December 24th, 2007
This whole Christmas thing has really got me thinking about gifts and the whole act of giving. We’ve become a generation of the gift card. Little plastic cards that hide the “shame” of giving cash. But when you think about it, why would you give someone something that isn’t useful to them? As a poor grad student, the last thing I need is a gift card to Best Buy or Banana Republic. I rather get cash so I could pay off my tuition or buy books for next semester.
Why has the gift card become so popular? Because we really don’t know each other anymore. Think about it. You get a gift card for someone because you don’t know what they like. You don’t know what they already have. You don’t know what they need. But you feel “ashamed” (there’s that word again) for giving cash. So you hide it in a gift card. You feel good, the receiver feels kinda good for being remembered, but doesn’t really put the card to use.
Ninja and I have been doing something over the last few years. Instead of trying to figure out what each other needed or wanted, we just asked. We also combined Christmas and our birthdays together to form one gift because so much about giving has to do with the monetary value of the gift. So we did the logical thing and combined them so we can get each other more expensive gifts, stuff that we would really need / use.
But there was still something missing. The thoughtfulness that comes with the surprise. That’s what gifting is really about. Putting the thought into someone you care about and saying, “so and so would really like this, I’m going to get it for them”.
So, when people spout, “it’s the thought that counts”. It’s true. They’re just using it in the improper context. It’s not so much the thought of, “hey, I remembered
What did you get for your
-Penguin
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