Musing on food and cooking ...

Monday, December 10, 2007

Christmas Shopping Is Pissing Me Off This Year

For Christmas this year, my family decided (why, I don't know) that the women were going to buy a generic women's gift (as if there is such a thing) and the men would buy generic men's gifts, upper price limit of $15, and then everyone would just draw numbers and pick a gift from the pile.

I hate this.

First, it is harder than hell to find a gift - a decent gift - for $15. Even if I bump it to $25, it is still rough.

Second, it goes against my nature. It has been heretofore the family tradition that we draw names and then find a suitable present for the name we draw. I rather enjoy this. I spend a lot of time thinking about the person and finding a gift unique for them. This buy a generic present thing is annoying. Hell, I don't even know what a generic gift for a woman might be! You can't buy clothes, as you will get the wrong size. You can't buy scent. You can't buy a spa day for $15 and under. Ideas, anyone? What is a secular humanist with neopagan tendecies supposed to do?!?

6 comments:

joshhill1021 said...

You could get a gift card to like Target or some other general type store.

Or you could do what I had a cousin of mine did whenever we had the whole gift exchange without specific names, hell I think he did it when he had someone's name too. He would bring books that he had read and liked and then pass them onto whoever happened to get that gift. There you got some recycling of books and some cleaning up as well. Heck you could do a book or two that you didn't like just to get rid of them.

Anonymous said...

Mittens, gloves, 2 nice bottles of lotion, candles. A small box of nice chocolates. A big box of crappy chocolates. A throw blanket.

Those are the things. I think.

GourmetGoddess said...

We actually do the book and magazine recycling thing in the family at every family gathering. I have a huge box of Cooking Light magazines I have to go through.

A coworker suggested, since I just can't bring myself to do the lotion and chocolate and candle thing, that I make a gift basket that includes the ingredients to one of my recipes, and include a copy of the recipe. That could be fun!

Brave Sir Robin said...

I like the recipe idea.

Little Merry Sunshine said...

What about a journal and nice pen or a fuzzy pair of slippers? I would love those.

Little Merry Sunshine said...

This post has really had me thinking the last few days. So much so that I wrote about the same thing with a list of possible gifts over on my blog. Some of the greatest gifts I've ever given or received cost next to nothing. Thanks for inspiring me.