Gift cards: Jumping the shark?

Tim Horton had a bookstore too?

What else... Diuck tape...

 

Gift cards work for me. Perfect for the hard to shop for person and nice enough for the person who requires more than a simple thank you.

 

Christmas would be about 1,000 times better without the tradition of gift-giving. I would eliminate it from my life if I could, except my mother is a gift nazi. She wants lists, which she buys things off of exclusively. Then she pesters everybody - my wife, my brother, etc. - about whether I gave them "the same list" because she's scared of duplicating a present and thereby, I guess, ruining Christmas. My family's favorite tradition was a huge screaming match between my parents that lasted well into the night on either Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, and it typically resulted from festering resentment or underlying issues with an extended family member's gift-giving acumen, which of course symbolized something deeper about relationships, willingness to spend time gift-shopping, etc., etc. Now gift cards are at issue.

It's now been set up to be nothing but a fucking sociological mine field that you have to navigate through in December, trying to make it to New Year's Day without the family structure imploding. My 4-year-old nephew opened up a gift - Play-Dough - and announced immediately, "I already have this," causing red-faced embarrassment from his dad, and causing his uncle (not me, another one who gave the gift) to jump in to try to rectify the situation, saying that the boy could keep this set at his grandmother's house, etc., etc.

Gift-giving makes ingrates of our children and basket cases of adults.

I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate gift-giving and all it represents. A fucking obstacle course for families.

 

I guess what I meant was, now gift cards are up for debate, too. So where does it end? Christmas would just be so much more enjoyable if it wasn't structured as a test of one's mettle as a family member.

 

my three boys requested "best buy" gift cards from family members. the little suckers received close to 500 bucks worth and plan to get a 27-inch hdtv to hook up to their new game contraption -- or is it vice versa? not a bad deal.

 

wow. a big "bah, humbug," to you, too.

someone didn't get that shiny red bike one year, eh?

 

To me, gift cards seem like, "Here -- buy your own fucking gift. I'm not standing in line for the likes of you."

Asking for a gift card is like saying, "I know you're too lame to buy me something I'd actually use, anyway."

Plus, there's that whole thing of people knowing exactly how much you spent. I try to avoid that.

 

That's quite a leap to make, isn't it?

Gifts cause nothing but problems. I love Christmas. I hate gifts. And it's not because I didn't get what I wanted. That's lame. I ALWAYS got what I wanted. And my mother still obsessed over gifts. She continues to. Maybe some families can handle gift-giving maturely. Mine can't.

When we start debating what gift cards "say," then we're over-analyzing gifts and draining the holiday of its vitality.

Life is rife with potential conflicts, people running into confrontations and real or imagined insults. Do we really need to create more, a la Christmas?

If I never got another gift in my life, I'd be happy. And I'd give them if people wanted them, but at least it would take out the stress over whether I spent more/less/put more or less thought into the gift than the person I exchanged them with.

I prefer to be nice to people all year long. And I understand that the two things aren't mutually exclusive, but I do think our culture has developed to the point where people give "things" - whether it be a gift at Christmas or a big plate of ham when someone's parent dies - to excuse themselves from putting the effort into real attempts at human connection.

 

Buck, I'm glad you get where I'm coming from.

 

Well, that's one way to look at it. Here's another:

"Listen, I know you're busy as hell and have two dozen people to buy for. This is a stressful time of year, and I don't want you fretting or worrying about getting me the perfect gift. Frankly, I am thrilled and grateful to get anything and to have people who want to give me something. If you happen to stumble on the "perfect" gift for me accidentally, I'm sure I'll love it. But I don't want you to fret about it or to run from store to store if you have an idea but the item is out of stock or you can't find the right size or color or whatever. Seriously, a gift card will make me happy and give you one less thing to worry about."

 

Gift-card equivalent:


"You know what I got for Christmas this year? It was a banner fuckin' year at the old Bender family! I got a carton of cigarettes. The old man grabbed me and said "Hey! Smoke up, Johnny!"