Sunday, November 30, 2008

Gifts, gifting and giftiness

Spoiler alert--Christmas is coming. I know, I hate to be surprised, too.

What do you do when you are trying to choose a gift for an incredibly special person in your life, and your approach to gift-giving is completely different from theirs? In my family, we always choose useful gifts. We like useful gifts, like gift cards, sheet sets, kitchen knives, iPods. My special person believes in giving useless gifts. But no gift is really useless, is it?

When I receive something that had no other purpose than to make me happy, it would be useful. That's the way I see it. And after all, isn't gift giving--at least partially--about what the gift says about the giver? You see, I've already decided what to give this person for the holidays. I decided this based on things he has said he enjoys having and using, and partly on things I want to give him. He hasn't said he wants these things. I didn't check them off his wish list. I think he will like them. I'm not worried about the quality of the gifts, so to speak. But what if he isn't so interested in them because they are "useful"? Perhaps some "useless" gift should be waiting in the wings? Are they going to be perceived as boring or pedantic?

To be perfectly honest (and if you can't tell the truth at Christmas, when can you, eh?) I am a little intimidated by "useless" gifts. Especially if you haven't known the person for years and years. I feel like giving these sorts of gifts takes some warming up to. Maybe my love language is acts of service, so that translates into the type of gift I naturally lean towards.

I'll figure this out. But I think I'll have a useless gift or two around just in cases.

1 comment:

holly wynne said...

Aww, very endearing post, though I have no answers for you. And I love that you, too, say "just in cases." Who'da known that that movie would permeate so many areas of our lives?