Dear Etiquetteer:
My husband discovered a shocking new trend via that massive online seller (A....n): after selecting an item as a gift for another, the gift-giver has the option of checking a box that says, in effect, “If the gift recipient doesn’t like the gift, they can instead receive an A.....n gift card of equal cash value.” I think that’s about as gauche as it comes. Has gift-giving become merely (or solely) transactional? What’s the joy, then?
Dear Mortified:
Like applauding the National Anthem (which is not Perfectly Proper), the gift receipt has come to stay, whether we like it or not. Gifts do sometimes have to be exchanged for good reason — for instance, if they’re the wrong size or don’t work. It isn’t always possible for the giver to handle that transaction, and that means the recipient needs the receipt.
But your husband’s discovery worked your last nerve — and it leads right to the heart of holiday gift-giving. A holiday gift has three attributes: it’s something the giver thinks will please the recipient, it’s a surprise, and its cash value (whether high or low) isn’t supposed to eclipse the relationship between giver and receiver. That said, everyone has received a gift that leads to the (hopefully silent) question “How well do you actually know me?” It’s understandable that people would rather receive gifts they actually want, but that’s a secondary part of the gift-giving equation. “Take what you get and like it,” as the old saying goes.*
There are gift-givers who genuinely, anxiously want to give a gift that will bring pleasure. They don’t always have the knowledge, and they still want it to be a surprise.** For them a gift receipt ensures that, even if they didn’t guess correctly, the recipient can still get something they prefer. What Etiquetteer thinks disturbs you most is the automatic assumption that the gift won’t please — not to mention the abrasive dissatisfaction some recipients can’t hide. Etiquetteer wishes more people would consider the feelings of the givers.
There’s a flip side to the gift receipt, also to do with that massive online seller: the wish list. It’s one thing to have a wish list where the curious can find it easily for gift ideas, but quite another to promote it actively. Greed is still one of the Seven Deadly Sins, besides which it’s Terribly Unattractive.
The larger question you didn’t ask is, why do we exchange gifts with people we don’t know sufficiently well to judge their preferences? Tradition? Obligation? Fear? If there is, in fact, no joy in gift-giving, why do we persist in it? If we were to take all that into consideration, Etiquetteer predicts that our giving lists would look much smaller and very different.
Etiquetteer wishes you many well-chosen and gracefully received gifts, and sincere Lovely Notes of Thanks afterward.
*Etiquetteer remembers, too, the 20th century corollary from the 1956 musical remake of The Women, The Opposite Sex:
Pat (Carolyn Jones): “Nice girls take what they can get!”
Crystal (Joan Collins): “Nice girls get what they can take!” This is Very Naughty Indeed.
**Of course holiday gifts should be a surprise! Etiquetteer gets so annoyed with people who don’t care about that.