Ever Been Kind of Insulted By a Christmas Gift?

[FigmentSpark]

For families that live in the same area and are tight-knit, complete with celebrating the holidays together, I can see why people would get gifts for everyone, or at least have a large gift exchange system. But these days, so many families are separated and just don't see each other as much or depend on each other the way they did even 50 years ago. Extended family gift exchanges likely fall by the wayside for them.

I barely know my cousins and almost never see them. I'll send a Christmas card, but wouldn't know the first thing to get them.

 

[kathyk2]

If

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with different families having different gifting traditions and if everyone is onboard with the way things are done then there’s no problem. My husband and I both grew up in families where adults did the shopping for whatever extended relatives were to receive gifts and our names were included on the tag, as the gift was coming from the whole family. The same is true now — my nieces have never personally selected or individually given gifts to myself, my husband, or our kids. On the occasions that they have given a gift to someone in my household, the gift has come from my SIL with their names included on the tag. My nieces are about to the age where they’ll be on their own soon and I wouldn’t expect them to start buying us gifts. In fact, I would feel bad if they did, thinking they were doing it out of some sense of obligation rather than genuine desire. If selecting just the right gift each year for your grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. was something you truly enjoyed doing, great! Have at it. I just know that I lived so hand-to-mouth in my late teens/early twenties that I could barely scrape together the money for rent and I often went with without food because I simply couldn’t afford it. There’s zero chance I could have lived up to some expectation of buying gifts for every adult in the extended family, so I’m glad I didn’t have to.

I don’t know what the gift-giving norms are in the PP’s family, but his attitude about his grandson really rubbed me the wrong way. He didn’t simply say he was surprised or his feelings hurt by not receiving a gift from the grandson. (If the grandson normally gives him something and suddenly skipped this year, you’d think Granddad might extend a little grace that there might be good reason the grandson couldn’t manage a gift this year. If the grandson was previously just “included on the tag” and never personally gave him a gift before then this shouldn’t come as a surprise.) No, he had to make sure we all knew his grandson was a loser with no friends who sits in his room on the computer all day, paying no bills and having no responsibilities. And, he’s kept a running tally of how much money he’s spent over the course of his grandson’s life. Btw, he was a good enough parent to teach the kid’s mother right when she was growing up, but she managed to drop the ball when it came to her own child. It sounds like there’s some contempt here that runs deeper than one missing Christmas gift.

If a young person posted that they were upset they didn't receive a gift from their grandparents they would be called entitled or a spoiled brat.

 

[sam_gordon]

I thought I'd put a funny story on here, that happened a couple of years ago.
My grandson was going off to college at The University of Minnesota - Moorhead.
I got online and looked up Moorhead State to order him a sweatshirt. I was surprised to see that they had a very small amount of sweatshirts for sell, but I ordered one with the logo (a dragon) on it.
Before Christmas, I showed it to my daughter because I was so proud to have ordered it online, LOL.
She laughed and said "That's Morehead State University in Kentucky!!!!! Not U of M, Moorhead!!! I was horrified that I got the wrong one.
Anyway, I bought him the right one, but wrapped the "wrong" one up for him Christmas morning.
Everyone in the family was "in" on the gag and were watching intently as he opened his gift.
The look on his face was priceless, and he just looked at it and said"Thanks Grandma". He was going to keep it and not embarrass me for getting the wrong University. Such a sweetie. We all burst out laughing at that.
I sent it back, but wish I'd kept it. Because every Christmas we have a good time retelling the story and laughing about it.
I never thought he would accept it and thank me to keep me from being embarrassed. He is a special grandson

Morehead State University's mascot is an Eagle, not a Dragon.

DD is an alum (campus is about an hour from us).

ETA: I see UM-Moorhead is the Dragons.

 

[MomOfDisneyPrincess]

I'm glad I was not expected to buy gifts for grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. I had four living grandparents, six great aunts (four had spouses). My dad was one of eight children and my mom was one of four. All were married and had children, giving me 24 cousins. With the span of ages, many of those cousins had children while I was still a kid and I never met any of their children. We are also spread out, literally, from coast to coast.

As an adult, we switched to drawing names for my immediate family, parents, siblings and our children. It was out of necessity since none of us made a lot of money. I was single and my sister-in-law was a stay at home mom. In 2001, all three of us kids lost our jobs within a 6 month span. My sister decided to just stay home with her kids, as well, so we all three were single income households. That was the year we pared it down to just having the children exchange names and gifts. My parents still gave everyone gifts, but it made it easier on the rest of us.

One of my favorite gift mix-ups was when we kids were all still young and single. My sister was notorious for wrapping beautiful gifts, but never putting gift tags on them. She would shake or squeeze gifts if she was unsure and then pass them out. One year it backfired on her. The year before she had given me the game of Pictionary. She handed me and my brother almost identical gifts to open. We began opening them at the same time. We each had one end opened and peeked inside. Mine was Pictionary again, so I kind of smiled and paused. I looked up and my brother had a funny look on his face, recovered and said, "Thanks, I'll have to learn how to use this." My sister suddenly realized that she has mixed up the gifts, snatched our gifts from us and handed them to the other person. We got a good laugh over that for many years. The Pictionary was for him and I got a cookie press that I have use for decades now.

Thankfully, I don't have any stories of being insulted by a gift. I don't really have any mean spirited people in my family and if work gift exchanges were not to my liking, I still felt the thought counted for something and didn't worry about it.

 

[ford91exploder]

Never in my teens/adulthood have I ever bought a gift for grandparents, aunts, uncles, or cousins. Some of those people got gifts from me when I was very young — IOW, my mother picked out some trinket on my behalf and said “This is going to be your birthday gift to your grandfather, okay?” — but that didn’t last past the mid-elementary years. The gifting practices I’m familiar with tend to have gifts that flow down through the generations, not up. We sent my in-laws a Christmas gift from our three year old for the first time this year, just a little craft project he made for them. I expect he’ll continue to send them Christmas gifts for only as long as he can get away with smearing paint and gluing random objects to paper and having people think it’s cute, which probably means it will stop long before college.

in our family we still tend to give handcrafted gifts, but thats due to many of us being artistically gifted So keep encouraging the creation of handcrafted gifts by your kids, When I was 12 i was still handcrafting gifts but by then it was jewelry with semi-precious stones (jasper, opal and geode slices) and leaded stained glass i was making,

 

[ford91exploder]

Never in my teens/adulthood have I ever bought a gift for grandparents, aunts, uncles, or cousins. Some of those people got gifts from me when I was very young — IOW, my mother picked out some trinket on my behalf and said “This is going to be your birthday gift to your grandfather, okay?” — but that didn’t last past the mid-elementary years. The gifting practices I’m familiar with tend to have gifts that flow down through the generations, not up. We sent my in-laws a Christmas gift from our three year old for the first time this year, just a little craft project he made for them. I expect he’ll continue to send them Christmas gifts for only as long as he can get away with smearing paint and gluing random objects to paper and having people think it’s cute, which probably means it will stop long before college.

in our family we still tend to give handcrafted gifts, but thats due to many of us being artistically gifted So keep encouraging the creation of handcrafted gifts by your kids, When I was 12 i was still handcrafting gifts but by then it was jewelry with semi-precious stones (jasper, opal and geode slices) and leaded stained glass i was making,

 

[disneyseniors]

Morehead State University's mascot is an Eagle, not a Dragon.

DD is an alum (campus is about an hour from us).

ETA: I see UM-Moorhead is the Dragons.

OOPS! Maybe the dragon is U of M's logo????

 

[mi*vida*loca]

From family in your home that is probably normal but once people outside of your household start to give you gifts, especially cousins that are also working part time then there is a sort of obligation to exchange. I know that my sister stopped giving them gifts this year. She lives 1000 miles away and wasn't expecting anything other then a thank you note. Nope didn't happen. I started giving my parents and grandparents things as soon as I was earning any money over and above my minor self support needs. It's probably not necessary, and I certainly haven't ever mentioned anything to him about it even though my other grandchildren always give me a gift, even if it is nothing more then a hand drawn picture. If you take in hundreds of dollars worth of gifts and you have reached 21 years old, it is time to stop just thinking about yourself. It doesn't have to be much... even a $10.00 gift card would be nice. Just the way I was raised I guess.

No there’s no obligation. I hate this mindset. If you give a gift you do it because you want to not because you expect something in return. And you shouldn’t receive a gift and automatically think that you have to reciprocate. That makes getting a gift a job and not a good experience.

 

[anotherfakename]

My ex-MIL used to deliberately give me clothes that were one or two sizes too small to give me "something to aim for".

 

[goofyernmost]

No there’s no obligation. I hate this mindset. If you give a gift you do it because you want to not because you expect something in return. And you shouldn’t receive a gift and automatically think that you have to reciprocate. That makes getting a gift a job and not a good experience.

I suppose that is a nice world to live in, but it comes across as cheap and uncaring. You become a taker and not a giver. Cancel the whole Christmas foolishness and I'd be fine with it, but don't expect or accept something from someone when you refuse to show any generosity yourself. If you don't give anything and do not expect anything from anybody, that is fine. However, put yourself in the other situation were you give a gift to someone and receive nothing in return. That generates an entirely different human emotion.

 

[mi*vida*loca]

I suppose that is a nice world to live in, but it comes across as cheap and uncaring. You become a taker and not a giver. Cancel the whole Christmas foolishness and I'd be fine with it, but don't expect or accept something from someone when you refuse to show any generosity yourself. If you don't give anything and do not expect anything from anybody, that is fine. However, put yourself in the other situation were you give a gift to someone and receive nothing in return. That generates an entirely different human emotion.

I do show generosity by saying thank you. How are you a taker if you aren’t asking anyone to buy you these gifts? I don’t expect gifts from anyone. And you say don’t accept it but what do you say “sorry but take your gift back because I didn’t get you anything.” Who does that?

It comes off cheap and uncaring to you. When I buy gifts for people I don’t expect anything in return and I do buy gifts for people and get nothing in return. I buy for two of my younger cousins small kids. Every Xmas and bday and neither one gets me or my kids gifts and I don’t expect them to. I do it because I want to.

I have a huge family. If all of my cousins and aunts and uncles bought me gifts and I was expected to reciprocate I would be broke. And it’s just not happening. No matter how cheap or uncaring I looked. If you buy me a gift because you’re expecting something in return don’t buy me anything then.

 

[WebmasterMaryJo]

Hi posters.

Please remember that we are all not going to agree with each other, but we do need to be respectful of each other on these boards.

 

[ford91exploder]

I suppose that is a nice world to live in, but it comes across as cheap and uncaring. You become a taker and not a giver. Cancel the whole Christmas foolishness and I'd be fine with it, but don't expect or accept something from someone when you refuse to show any generosity yourself. If you don't give anything and do not expect anything from anybody, that is fine. However, put yourself in the other situation were you give a gift to someone and receive nothing in return. That generates an entirely different human emotion.

Define nothing, A treasured gift may simply be time spent with shut-in people and a smile is the only ‘return’ in that scenario. Yet it’s still a gift

 

[Heigh-Ho]

Define nothing, A treasured gift may simply be time spent with shut-in people and a smile is the only ‘return’ in that scenario. Yet it’s still a gift

A lot of us consider time spent with people we love (friends and family) to be a gift by itself

 

[Heigh-Ho]

Some of these comments I feel so bad for the people writing them because of what they went through

 

[disykat]

I suppose that is a nice world to live in, but it comes across as cheap and uncaring. You become a taker and not a giver. Cancel the whole Christmas foolishness and I'd be fine with it, but don't expect or accept something from someone when you refuse to show any generosity yourself. If you don't give anything and do not expect anything from anybody, that is fine. However, put yourself in the other situation were you give a gift to someone and receive nothing in return. That generates an entirely different human emotion.

Many of us do NOT WANT gifts, but get them randomly at times because there are other people who enjoy the whole gift thing. I'd love nothing better than to "Cancel the whole Christmas foolishness" of giving/receiving gifts! I posted this very dilemma a few days ago and was reassured by many here that I did not need to run out and get return gifts because I received unexpected gifts on my doorstep. Now I find out I'm a cheap, uncaring, taker. How do I "not accept" something that shows up at my doorstep?

 

[ronandannette]

Many of us do NOT WANT gifts, but get them randomly at times because there are other people who enjoy the whole gift thing. I'd love nothing better than to "Cancel the whole Christmas foolishness" of giving/receiving gifts! I posted this very dilemma a few days ago and was reassured by many here that I did not need to run out and get return gifts because I received unexpected gifts on my doorstep. Now I find out I'm a cheap, uncaring, taker. How do I "not accept" something that shows up at my doorstep?

I think you know better than to let that one particular post re-frame the whole scenario for you.

 

[sam_gordon]

No there’s no obligation. I hate this mindset. If you give a gift you do it because you want to not because you expect something in return. And you shouldn’t receive a gift and automatically think that you have to reciprocate. That makes getting a gift a job and not a good experience.

If I give someone a gift, I don't expect anything in return. It's because I wanted to get them something. However, if someone gets ME a gift, and I don't reciprocate (at the appropriate time), then *I* feel guilty.

 

[tarheelmjfan]

My husband is def not the best gift giver. I think it stems from him hating “clutter”, and he considers everything clutter. He legit is confused why anyone would want to have more than a single pair of sneakers, a single purse, or a single winter coat, so whenever I ask for something he’s immediately “you already have one, what do you need another for?”. Although there was a 5 year stretch where he would get me pillows.... one year he must have thought it was a pillow for the bed but it ended up being a single throw pillow for a couch.... I finally had to not so subtly tell him enough with the pillows (to be clear, at no point did I indicate I wanted or needed a pillow, I don’t know where it came from). It was a little frustrating because I DID put effort into finding him something good, and he ended up really liking it, and he generally would just give me a gift card or worse, an I O U of “pick something you’d like and I’ll buy it”. I’d give him lists and say “any one of these I would like!” to try to push him into putting some of his *own* thought into it, still didn’t work. Gift cards.
This year was way better, he picked out a really pretty tennis bracelet that I really love. And a **** ton of jerky

I couldn't decide whether to "like" your tennis bracelet or "laugh" at the jerky. In the end, the jerky won out.

 

[Heigh-Ho]

If I give someone a gift, I don't expect anything in return. It's because I wanted to get them something. However, if someone gets ME a gift, and I don't reciprocate (at the appropriate time), then *I* feel guilty.

Is the gift you received out of the blue just thinking about you gift? Or was it like a birthday gift where you and the other person normally exchange gifts for birthdays and you didn't get them a birthday gift? Is this a Christmas gift where you normally don't exchange with the other person? Is this a situation where the gift is more one where a materialistic gift is not needed to reciprocate? I think people can be very creative in showing appreciation for something without it always needing to be some physical thing labeled a gift just to be able to say you gave a gift back for receiving a gift.