Giving and Getting

I forgot to get my stuff together for a proper article-based post today, and I have a date that starts...actually, he was supposed to be here 15 minutes ago, so hopefully soon, which means I don't have any time right now to putter around the internet looking for other things to blog about.

But luckily for me I've got a rantish topic all ready.




See, it's my birthday next week. I'm turning...older...and as I've done so, I've gotten fewer and fewer presents in my life.  I understand that this is a natural effect of life, so for the most part it doesn't bother me.  Try telling that to my inner spoiled brat, of course, and, well, I often cry around my birthday.  And even when I do get gifts, I tend to be miserable about wanting more.  I'm not really selfish or greedy (well, maybe a bit), it's just that some part of my subconscious has really high expectations for gift-giving holidays, and then can't handle the crushing disappointment.

Which is especially odd for my birthday because I hardly ever got a worthwhile present for it.  I think the birthday gift-price was about $20, and if my parents could get away with buying me something for less than that they would.  When I was little I didn't notice, but eventually I could make a few connections.  Not that I think people should spend hundreds of dollars on their child's birthday, but that a $50 gift once a year--or something a bit out of range that your kid really wants often won't kill you.

But my bitterness over being not-spoiled as a child isn't what I wanted to talk about.  What I actually wanted to bring up was this idea that gifts aren't always appreciated, and are sometimes worth even less to the receiver than they cost the giver.

Planet Money had a few podcasts about this around Christmas, and I think it's an intriguing idea. You can find the podcasts and listen to them yourself (maybe someday I'll come back and link this article--if people ever actually read this). But the basic theory is that there is money lost in buying gifts that disappoint the recipient.

I don't really want to deal with the economics side of this, but whenever I hear articles about this idea, I try to puzzle out what would be the best way to solve this problem.

The podcast's interviewee suggests gift cards and giving money to charities, which is a fine idea, but honestly, if you give all my Christmas money to starving children in Africa, I will secretly resent you (not the kids, never the kids).  And gift cards are nice, but there's always the trouble of getting the right store for it to be perfectly appreciated--I've had a few that made me wonder...

After hearing all this about, though, I can't help but wonder why it is that no one offers a wish list as a possible alternative to buying something someone will hate.  Several years I've gotten lists from my little sister for Christmas, and I've gotten her things that she still uses every day, and really likes. Same with my other sister.

Of course, you do need to make sure the wishlist has the right stuff on it.  I ended up with 7 blank journals this year, thanks to a lack of variety on mine, but if people are so overall disappointed in receiving gifts, I don't understand why--I mean, Amazon has plenty of services just for this, as do other stores. If you're really obsessive we could do a Christmas (or birthday) Registry at Target, but really, one should be able to write down what they want, hand that off to others, and then receive those things in exchange.

So why don't we?

Well, assuming other people are like me (an unlikely scenario), then as you get older it becomes less acceptable to ask for things--whether those things are Christmas gifts or money loans, and it's an issue of pride to try and guess whether your cousins whom you only see three times a year would rather have a blanket or a set of tea towels.

Then there's the people who don't stick to the lists.  "Hey, this says 'Holiday 2011 Barbie collector's edition,' so she must still like Barbies; let's get her 'Gym Barbie' instead, it's on sale."  Can you see people doing this? I can see people doing this.

There's one more alternative way of giving gifts, and it's one I've employed with my older sister for several years now.  Instead of exchanging actual gifts or gift cards, because we were usually half a country apart around our birthdays (hers is two weeks after mine), we exchanged the idea of a $20 gift, and then we could go out and buy whatever for ourselves, tell our sister what she got us later, and everyone was happy.

And if you didn't want to spend the money, you could just not buy something for yourself (and/or claim it went to your next big purchase), but the other sister would still be happy because she got what she wanted.  It's an elegant system. 

Buy shit for yourself, thank someone else for it and get on with life. No disappointments there. No economic loss for society.  The only people who lose out are the starving children in Africa--but if I wanted I could give them my birthday money, too.