I have mixed feelings about the holidays. I love getting everyone together and for me, gifting is a love language. I try to be thoughtful about every gift for each recipient. There comes a time about two weeks before Christmas Day however, when I am ready to abandon gift-giving entirely. The pressure to make everything magical and create thoughtful gifts gets to be too much. It is usually in these dark moments that I succumb to gift mistakes.
Common gifting errors:
1. Giving someone too much / over-gifting in a panic
When the kids were little, I realized that they liked opening the boxes as much as the gifts that were in them. As a result, I would wrap up many small things – socks, toothbrushes, etc. in order to extend the joy of opening. As they got older, they didn’t necessarily relish the opening part of Christmas (in fact I think it made the teenagers uncomfortable), but I could not bear the thought of having materially fewer gifts for them.
The thought that they were counting the number of presents and comparing it with last year is ridiculous. This pressure was entirely self-inflicted, but it was a hard habit to break. You don’t need a lot of small junky gifts to make an impression. A few meaningful gifts are really just as good.
The other over-gifting trap that I fall into is that I tend to scoop up everything that might work for a person when I am forced to buy gifts without enough time to figure out what I really want to give them. In fact, there were many years when my family could tell who I had saved for last, because they usually ended up with double the number of presents that everyone else had, and the gifts were a weird mishmash of odd items.
Over-gifting seems fine in theory but in reality, it is most likely a sign that you are stressed about gifting in general.
2. Giving a gift that reflects my interests, not the recipient’s
As tends to happen….. When Christmas shopping, I inevitably come across things that I would like for myself. One present for me – one for my loved one. As I am happily adding gifts to my cart for myself, I am suddenly struck by the fact that this is not what I had set out to do, and when all these gifts arrive, I realize what I have accumulated is a pile of gifts that reflect my tastes and interests and not necessarily the person for whom I was shopping.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why on one lovely Christmas day, my husband unwrapped a set of sheets and gardening supplies.
3. Giving a gift that requires the recipient to do something
I don’t think I have ever done this, but I have been at the receiving end of these gifts. You know the ones. The unassembled giant toys. Tickets to an event from my mother – but 90 miles away. Honestly, I don’t even like those mason jars full of cookie ingredients because then I feel pressured to bake something.
The best gifts are the ones where you aren’t required to spend any energy or money in order to use them.
4. Going over an agreed upon budget
This is a tricky one. Gift exchanges with agreed upon spending limit exist so that all participants get and receive something of similar value. The person who consistently goes over the agreed upon budget (sometimes by a significant amount), can ruin a good exchange. Going over budget is a power move by the giver and rarely has anything to do with trying to please the recipient. It says a lot about the givers’ need for praise. Yes, it is possible to be a show-off gifter.
Now, I don’t think of myself as a showoff gifter, but I have been guilty of giving within the limits but after getting a really good deal on that item. A gift that would normally retail well above the exchange dollar limit, can sometimes be in the correct range when one is exploiting Black Friday deals, etc.
I have realized that this is also a bit of a flex that says more about me than my desire to make my exchange partner happy. The “look what I got for $50!” really isn’t the important part of the gift-giving. I don’t need people to praise my shopping abilities (which are strong and multi-faceted). I need my recipient to be happy and for their gift to be in parity with everyone else’s.
5. Giving the same gift every year – or not varying from a theme
My sister likes giraffes. There were a series of three or four years when every gift she received for any holiday was a giraffe of some sort. In fact, I mistakenly gave her the same giraffe trinket box twice!
After four years of receiving giraffes, she finally had to weigh in and let us know that although she still liked giraffes, she did not need any more giraffe décor, sheets, shirts, or socks in her life.
And I get that.
It is easy to fall into a pattern of thinking that someone is one-dimensional. It is good to pick up on personality clues and specific interests, but this can be overdone.
The stress of the holidays can be the cause for any number of poor decisions. Maintaining healthy boundaries and good communication can cure many of the issues around problematic gift-giving. Remember, that good gift-giving should not be about you, and while thoughtful gifts are best, as long as you play by the agreed upon rules and think outside the box a bit, you can be an excellent gifter.
