To think that gift giving is a terrible, pressurising con?

[WillYouDoTheDamnFanjo]

Truly loved ones excepted, I have completely had it with gift giving.

Coming from a family that uses the exchange of gifts and associated thank yous as a bizarre form of emotional torture, I am ready to give the whole thing up.

Really, why do we do it to ourselves and our friends and family? Wouldn't we be better off spending the cash on a meal, or a day out?

I used to love thoughtfully picking out or hand-making every gift, and genuinely didn't care whether I received anything in return (even a thank you). However something has changed this year.

A very dear friend of mine has never ever given me a gift, not for wedding, arrival of DC, anything. I used to buy her little things for birthday and Christmas. After a few years I couldn't deny my "where's MY f-ing present ?!" feelings any longer and asked her about it. She said that presents were a form of contract. At the time I thought this was a bit harsh, but she was a lovely and generous person in other ways so I just took her off my present list. It's one of my strongest friendships and has lasted 22 years.

I'm not just being "bah, humbug" here. I think the whole business of giving trinkets and thanking for trinkets causes more harm than good, particularly to women who bear the burden at Christmas time.

I asked my parents and grandparents not to buy me a pressie a few years ago, so that I could do the same, but everyone said 'oh no, we will still buy you something, but just don't get us anything'. Which I just felt I couldn't do, and so the buying of Boots 3 for 2 crap continues !

So people who 'don't buy presents for adults', do you buy nothing for your parents / grandparents (if they are still around obviously).

Sigh, I really do find the whole retail feeding frenzy that is Christmas deeply depressing, but don't know how to break the cycle.

I buy for my parents only if I see something they'll like. I don't specifically go looking. So sometimes they get presents sometimes they don't.

Gift giving has always been fairly informal in my family anyhow. We're much likely to give each other gifts at other points in the year than feeling obliged to at Christmas/Birthdays.

FanjoKazooie - the last few years I've given my mother a cow, a toilet, and some school books from Oxfam. She was absolutely delighted (she gets the card and the poor families and children in a third world country get the goods)

I am hugely comforted by the number of posters who agree that present giving at Christmas has become excessive. I haven't yet broached the subject with my family but this thread has given me the confidence to do so. They'll probably be relieved.

Not sure DH's family will be the same though. MIL always buys tons of crap at Christmas and the majority ends up in the charity shop. Such a shame... what a waste of money. Wish she'd just give the money to her preferred charity instead.

Immediate family and yougsters only, instead i have a mid January dinner party with tons of booze which goes on most of the night, everyone crashes out and next day we go to the pub for lunch and I pay. This is my present to friends and family

OP I'm totally with you - I hate it all so much. I find giving and receiving presents horrendously embarrassing and I wish we didn't have to do it. DP and DC are OK because DP knows me. But with other relatives/family members I wish it would stop.

I have suggested it but they just refused to hear it / deliberately misunderstood / were so shocked I relented. It's really important to my mum for example to buy presents precisely because it is part of her crazy emotional agenda to be able to bang on about how expensive they were or complain about something you bought her and make you feel 2 inches tall. DP's mum is the same! I hate hate hate it. I am just plucking up the courage to try to address the whole issue again this year.

OTOH a well-timed, thoughtful present can be lovely - but I agree it's the having to do it at birthdays and Christmas especially that piles on the pressure. Even for the DC - I think they should get some presents, but the fewer the better. DS gets overexcited and horribly rude and entitled - yet the presents don't particularly make him happy in the way saving up and buying something does.

I agree it's ridiculous. You only have to go somewhere like Boots and see how much of the shop is given over to "stuff to give to people". Madness and a complete waste of money and materials.

I have tried to get my DB to stop giving me a gift at Christmas (and birthday). What's the point, especially now he's buying for my DCs. Neither of us knows what to get the other so it's an exchange of vouchers. Why?

We stopped buying presents a few years ago . We get dd something low key like a set of books from the book people and some pyjamas but nothing else. Even between DH and I. I do make people food gifts and send them out ( but not people who are staying with us as they will be eating my food!) but never expect anything in return, or want it tbh. Christmas is so much nicer.

Strange I'm finding this thread a little depressing

I love buying presents. Last year my fav gifts I gave were to two single mums (my best friends) who were not having their children with them that year. They didn't know they were getting anything - I wanted to show them that I cared and was thinking about them. (pamper bags - cost about £15 each - hair stuff, nail stuff, wine, choc, book, slippers, PJ's - all presented nicely)

We only buy for :

5 friends kids
4 kids within the family
3 adults

I dont even buy for my sister and her 3 kids who live abroad.. we prefer to buy them when they come over or we go over there (yearly) ... except for my friends kids it is only the people that we will be seeing on Xmas day who gets anything

I find it sad that so much money is wasted at Christmas and people spend the whole year paying off their credit card debts before they start the whole depressing charade again.

We buy a few things for our kids and do photo calendars for our parents and that's it.

Christmas isn't supposed to be about buying novelty presents for every Tom, Dick and Harry.

Wiki's short info on Marcel Mauss' 'The Gift' gives an anthropological perspective on the custom of gift-giving. IMO often genuine generosity has little to do with gift-giving.

youngblowfish Can I be cheeky and ask you to give a summary of his idea. I'm on a short tea break and have clicked onto your link but it doesn't tell me what you wanted to convey

I'm with cory and nuttybear - I love Christmas and the fun of opening presents with my family, and of searching for a gift that you know someone will enjoy. I've been really surprised reading this that so many people don't give presents - though I guess that's because we've always had a family tradition of sitting round opening presents together after Christmas lunch, so it's what I'm used to. I agree that it's crazy getting into debt over Christmas, but presents don't have to be expensive to be good, they just have to be thoughtful (my favourite presents last year were some packets of seeds for the garden, and some fluffy socks!). Some people are hard to buy presents for, yes, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try - or for people who don't like 'stuff', something like a day out might work?

I think it's quite sad that Christmas has become so commercialised and businesslike - giving gifts to those you love can be just a way of showing them you care and of having some fun, it doesn't have to have an ulterior motive. But I suppose it depends on your family and what they're like (I'm lucky), and I'm going to get ridiculed for my naive and old-fashioned attitude now....

There are still plenty of presents to sit round and open together in our family, it's not about no presents at all. I love Christmas too and I think it's partly because I don't spend all of December buying crap that no one needs or wants. Not suggesting that's what everyone does but judging by the 3 for 2 present sets shops do and colleagues moaning about having to find something for great aunt mabel it's not uncommon.

I know it's the thought that counts but I'm ungrateful and would prefer getting nothing than getting something I have no use for. I hate the thought of all that waste.

I must confess, I was once given a boots gift set as a leaving present but took it to boots and exchanged it for some tweezers and a razor.

It's so reassuring to know others feel like me! Xmas is like an arms race with MIL, if she brings round chocolates for after xmas dinner they're wrapped and go under the tree. DS and BIL are loaded and can really splash out at Xmas. I do like exchanging nice gifts with people I care about but hate the gradual escalation - it's now 3-4 gifts per person, rather than one, and if I stick to my guns and just get one thing per person I'm left in a silent audience of onlookers with my pile of extra presents, exclaiming enthusiastically about each one while wishing I'd wrapped each of FIL's gloves seperately to string out the giving bit for longer...

Have raised this with DH several times, I'm now on maternity leave and our income will drop as I'm the main breadwinner, would much rather just drop presents, set a £10 limit or do secret santa, but he says MIL will ignore it - and I dont know how to raise it!

I only buy for kids - and mostly kids that we actuallys eee regularly (i.e. have an ongoing relationship with) rather than the enormous hoard of extended family, most of whom I've never met at all or see randomly once every 3-4 years.

I actually love buying and wrapping the presents. If we had family that we ever saw at Xmas we would probably buy presents for them.

As the kids get older I guess they may prefer money - but I HATE giving money as a present.

Wish I could do this with my mum. She expects a present, doesn't give me any ideas unless it's something impossible (e.g. "A nice jumper, I haven't been able to find any I like"), then complains about whatever I buy her. Books - "I've read those before." Food - "I'll never eat all that, living on my own." etc.

Meanwhile I give her specific ideas for us and the kids, or tell her she can choose something herself, to be told, "I can't get to the shops, I'll send you the money and you can buy it."

Oh, some of you are so curmudgenly (sorry if this is mispelt)and I know that financially it's not easy for everyone, but Christmas is the best time! I just love love love giving christmas presents, looking out for the perfect gift for friends and relatives. I really don't like giving gift tokens and vouchers or 'buying to order.' It just spoils it for me. Half the fun is the wrapping presents and making them look pretty. I know we all have too much so I'm moving towards edible and drinkable for adults, or flowers or plants -all with a liited life, so don't clutter up people's homes for too long. Teenage and young male adults are the hardest because they tend not to enter into the spirit of Christmas (generalisation, I know)and as my ceiling for relatives is £20 (more £12-£15 if possible) I have been known to resort to itunes vouchers and similar, but reluctantly.

I'm not interested in receiving presents myself but expect other to give some thought into pressies for my dc. I remember one year my sil gave my 18month old some padded coathangers - didn't go down well with me at all, although I received them graciously on her behalf.

last year we went away for Christmas we hired two cottages and it was OH and I and our 2 DCs, my parent, my siter and her OH, my brother and his wife, my aunt and uncle and my two cousins and my grandma.

we agreed not to do presents as it was expensive staying away over christmas and we didn't want to take loads of stuff with us so all bought one present for someone else and set a budget of £50. it was so easy and meant you only had to buy for one person but we had such a fun christmas all together.

i have agreed with SIL this year that we will only buy for her DC and she will buy for our two DCs. Just need to work on the in laws now who go nuts a christmas.

I dislike gift giving because of the inevitable waste. I guess it reflects back on me that I don't know the recipients well enough but in terms of family, there is a bizarre taint of memories of total penniless poverty where my parents would get into debt to buy us presents which has resulted in me being literally unable to tell them what i want as a gift now-a-days even tho money is not so desperate for them. It is the strong sense of guilt at being so selfish. And yet if they do give me a present I balk (not ingratitude more a reflection of my own relative poverty now I have children) at the waste of money involved in a gift from them that I dont really want. It would be so much easier if i could ask for what i want but the culture of my childhood was that that would be selfish and presumptious to actually say what you want.
Then there is my boss, very small team, boss micromanages everything and times you if you go to the loo (not literally but it sometimes feels like it). It is compulsory for all team members to buy other team members birthday and christmas presents. I absolutely hate it not just because I dont know them well enough to know what they want but also because every penny spent on my collleagues is a penny less on my husband and children and gifts my colleagues give me are inevitably (not their fault) a stab in the dark and not what i want.
I agree with original poster, lets do away with presents or give gift vouchers instead, at least the recipient can decide even if it is impersonal

Nuttybear, your short break is probably long gone now :), but Mauss was the first anthropologist to look at the practice of giving gifts as a way of building relationships in what in his day were seen as 'primitive societes'. Then Derrida explored his ideas and noted that in Western societies we use gifts in exactly the same way - they always require reciprocity, there are expectations as to how much effort/money/time was spent sourcing the items - generally speaking, gifts are tied up in all kinds of socio-psychological issues. It is so easy to offend with a wrong gift or overwhelm the recipient with generosity, especially when it is out of place. Which is why this thread is so interesting. (Not entirely sure if this is relevant to anybody at all, but I find it fascinating that gifts are problematic not just for the average Christmas shopper, but also for a lot of cultural critics. I should probably stop rambling now :))

*'primitive societies'