Christmas Gifts

[ailbhe]

It's early, isn't it? but UNICEF have sent me their Christmas catalogue, so I've started thinking about it.

Christmas gifts - and birthday gifts - bother me. And cards, they bother me too. Because I love to receive them, at least, most of them - but greetings cards are usually a pointless, heavy-handedly humorous, eco-unfriendly way of syaing "I didn't forget! I care!" which, you know, ought to mean I use e-cards instead, but I loathe e-cards.

Gifts bother me because everyone I know already has enough stuff, and I have too much stuff, but we all want more stuff, and we don't need any of it. I don't actually know anyone on my must-give-gifts list who would be genuinely pleased to receive "10 geese for a farmer in Uganda" or whatever.

Thus the compromise: UNICEF. The cards aren't hideous and don't try to be amusing. The sources are moderate-to-good on the eco-meter. The cause is, without having done any research, fine. And the gifts... well, they're generic gifts. Candles and bags and stationery and toys and silk ties. Gifts for people who already have all the stuff they really want, because their income allows that, but still like more stuff as gifts, especially if it's nice stuff. And the UNICEF stuff is nice stuff.

The only time I tried to give a gift that wasn't clutter-junk, it wasn't used. Ho hum.

Comments

[ahruman.livejournal.com]

The people I give presents mostly give me a list of books they don’t have.

That, or booze. :-)

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

I actually really like the geese-for-a-farmer-in-Uganda thing. I've bought them "for" myself on occasion, because I had nobody to give them to and they seemed so neat.

[oldbloke.livejournal.com]

One year, very nearly everybody got a Retired Greyhound Trust card from me.

There's a lot of voucher swapping in my family.

[artela.livejournal.com]

One of the best received gifts we ever gave was the year we were really really really broke, so I hand made sweets and chocolates and decorated boxes and laid them out in diddy paper cups inside. It took me hours and hours and hours and hours to make them all for everyone, but every single one seemed to be appreciated when it was given :-)

Personally, though, I'd prefer not to waste money on both parties swapping meaningless trifles on certain dates and just spend time with the people instead.

[ailbhe]

Unfortunately, personal preference is more relevant in gift-receiving than in gift-giving. And international shipping for handmade chocolates is... Um.

The thing that *really* bugs me is that Certain Parties won't give me a goat for a Pakistani village because they "want to get me a real present." Even when I ask for the goat. Huh?!

Re: Christmas Gifts

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

christmas, and to some degree birthday gifts bother me not because everybody already has enough stuff (which is true, of course, but that doesn't prevent people from enjoying new stuff), but because it's obligatory and doesn't allow as much freedom to come up with something really nifty and individualised whenever the mood strikes.

i gave up scheduled gift giving more than a decade ago, and it was a shock to the system for some people (the paramour's mother, who can least afford it, persisted in giving us gifts anyway -- totally useless ones to boot, since she simply doesn't grok our tastes). but by now it's all ok, and everyone has become used to it. and people do, IMO, appreciate the gifts they do get a lot more because they know we thought of them specifically, not because we were under an obligation.

i do send cards for some scheduled events, like birthdays, but i make them myself so they're a bit more personal than if i went and bought hallmark cards. eco-unfriendliness of cards doesn't bother me a whole lot, being as i do things that are way, way more eco-unfriendly, and feel attacking those is more worthwhile. i also recycle a lot of stuff for the cards i make, so they're not as bad, again, as hallmark.

though probably not as good as unicef, but then again, they're more personal. when i didn't make my own cards, i used charity cards as well. and from the sounds of it, i would really like the "10 geese for a farmer in uganda", but i'd only give that if the person receiving it enjoyed it, yeah. btw, i tried to find that on the site you linked but couldn't. their cards have gotten so much better since i last looked, OMG. they're really beautiful now.

[ai731.livejournal.com]

I'm very likely going to do almost entirely handmade Christmas/Yule/Winter gift-giving-holiday gifts this year, not because I'm broke, but because I have the time for once, and it's a great excuse to do the craft stuff that I actually love to do, but never seem to find the time for.

[rmc28]

I tend to ask people what they want, and I maintain a "what to give Rachel for presents" page, if people ask. But I tend to also spot things throughout the year and hoard them against Christmas.

[supermouse.livejournal.com]

Book tokens. I love giving them and receiving them, especially receiving them, because then I can choose a book when I need or realy want a book and don't have to rush trying to guess what I want.

Books are clutter but they get lent, or given away and thus recycled.

How does one go about getting a goat for a village?