Dear Etiquetteer:
I've been exchanging birthday and Christmas gifts with a very dear friend I met through work for 20+ years. While it’s fun to come up with something unique for him every year I don't want him to feel pressured (as much as I love giving and getting presents). I was thinking of something like, “Let’s make this the last year we exchange gifts,” but that just doesn't feel like enough.
Dear Giving Friend:
It sounds like you’re ready to end longstanding traditions with a friend because you think he doesn’t enjoy it as much as you. But you’re not sure. That . . . that doesn’t sound very substantial. Before you embark on a Discussion About Feelings, think carefully about why you have this doubt. What’s your evidence? Has he suggested he has trouble shopping for you? Do you expect him to express himself in the same way you do? Think objectively before you act.
But if you really feel the need for change — you might be projecting your own restlessness onto your friend — then you have to start a Discussion About Feelings and be honest and kind. You could approach this from a few angles: that you’re cleaning house, that at this point in your life you’re really reevaluating how much stuff you have, that you have such a strong friendship after so long that you’d rather cherish that instead of tangible reminders. Be prepared to hear out your friend, whose opinion might not be what you expect.
You could also refocus your gift giving to consumables like specialty foods, beverages, or experiences (e.g. concert or theatre tickets, dinner out, etc.). Once they’re consumed, they take up no space! Etiquetteer suspects you each want the other to have a stress-free Christmas, but exchanging gifts with you might actually make his Christmas more joyous than you realize. Etiquetteer wishes you a loving and candid discussion with your friend.
Dear Etiquetteer:
What types of gifts are appropriate for female friends to give to a man, and for male friends to give to a woman? Or better yet, what types of gifts are completely inappropriate?
Dear Gifty:
These days, when mixed-gender friendships are not scrutinized so rigorously under the lens of Possible Marriage, it’s Perfectly Proper to give a gift that corresponds to a friend’s interests. So if your friend is interested in plants, cooking, French history, cosplay, exotic animals, card games, whatever — find a gift related to that interest. Avoid something that is obviously expensive. While often intended kindly, expensive gifts sometimes create a spirit of competition. That can rob the gift giving of its joy by putting the focus on the value of the gifts, and not the greater value of the friendship that inspires the giving.
There used to be a lot more restrictions on what gifts a lady could and could not accept from a gentleman. When Millicent Fenwick detailed how the rules were changing for unmarried girls in Vogue’s Book of Etiquette in 1948, one rule did not change: “Never accept a valuable present from a beau or possible beau — a very old rule and very sound.” Etiquetteer has always adored the followup from How to Set Up for Mah-Jongg and Other Lost Arts: “A lady never accepts an expensive present from a gentleman not her husband. A lady never accepts a present from her husband that’s not expensive.” So jewelry isn’t a Perfectly Proper gift for a gentleman to give a Woman Not His Wife.
Nor is clothing. Scarlett O’Hara is torn when Rhett Butler presents her with that green bonnet, and in the novel Gone With the Wind she remembers her mother’s admonitions against receiving anything like, “not even gloves or handkerchiefs. Should you accept such gifts, men would know you were no lady and would try to take liberties.”** Which Rhett Butler was very candid about trying to do.
For a girl graduating high school, The New American Etiquette of 1941 suggests that she might give her boyfriend “a wallet, fountain pen, or some such inexpensive evidence of her friendship,” while he might give her “flowers and an impersonal gift.” Etiquetteer would modify the classic advice of a gift being impersonal to suggesting that a gift correspond to a person’s interests without being too intimate — and absolutely not suggestive in any way.
The New American Etiquette includes gift suggestion lists for unmarried women to give to others, some laughably Of the Period. For instance, the list of gifts suitable to give to a man friend include: “Bronze sun dial, vacuum ice tub, onyx cut-out numerical dial clock, book-ends, portable bar of leather, saddle leather traveling game set.” The list of gifts suitable for a male relative betrays more intimate knowledge of daily habits: “Clothing accessories … electric shaving razor, ash tray and box for cigarettes . . . smoking equipment and supplies.”
Finally, personal handicrafts can’t be ruled out. Etiquetteer includes this because of the many wonderful skilled crafters and cooks out there, and because Edith Wharton mentions that the pansies on stage in Faust at the beginning of The Age of Innocence resemble “the floral pen-wipers made by female parishioners for fashionable clergymen.” Impersonal, but very much a gift of one’s self.
Etiquetteer wishes you joy as you search for the Perfectly Proper gift for each friend on your list.
*This is just a preference, but Etiquetteer would suggest you avoid food gifts like artisanal herb vinegars and condiments that are rarely used but take up space. The bottle looks less pretty the more dust it gathers on the counter.
**Gone With the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell, page 244. Used without permission. Please don’t hurt me.