Good Gifts and Bad Gifts

Growing up, my father used Christmas as an orgy of gift-giving. There were eleven children in my family and he would wall off the living room for Christmas morning. No one was allowed to even look in. Children who found presents hidden before Christmas were severely punished (except if they got smart enough to disguise their information, which many of my older siblings perfected as a strategy to know what was coming). We had to eat a “healthy breakfast” Christmas morning before we were allowed to open presents. We were only allowed to look into stockings (which contained a small candy bar, an orange, a quarter, and some nuts still in shells). We were bribed to eat well by once a year only Christmas breakfast items, including the only time I ever tasted cold cereal like Cap’n Crunch. But also, my mother made homemade waffles with homemade syrup, all the butter we could melt into the little waffle squares, scrambled eggs and sausages.

Finally, we were set free to tear open presents. As a child, this was a frenzy. We didn’t have to wait for the other kids to open their presents in order. We all opened our presents simultaneously and were not terribly concerned about what anyone else received. I remember this moment rather fondly from childhood. The anticipation—would I get what I’d put on the Christmas list that my father so carefully curated every year? If not this present, then maybe this one? Or this one? I also remember being excited to watch my siblings open the presents I purchased for them out of my carefully saved money. Christmas was everything to me. I loved my father’s version of Christmas morning.

It was Christmas afternoon that was difficult. It took an hour or more for me to realize and accept the reality that there were no more presents and that I’d have to wait a full year to see if this time (this time!) my father would actually pay attention to the lists that we made him, trying to convince him that we were old enough to understand what we wanted.

“You’d change your mind ten minutes later,” was one of his excuses.

“If I get you that, you’ll only get one present and you know you wouldn’t be happy” was another one.

Or even, “that’s not good for you and you know it.”

The older I got, the more I saw that my father rarely gave good gifts. The problem was that he believed he knew better than we did what we wanted. Or he knew better than we did what was good for us. I got no Star Trek gifts and plenty of perfume, makeup, and jewelry, things I never liked but which my father wanted me to wear and wanted me to enjoy. I use the term “corrective gifts” now to describe how he would give presents. Since we weren’t quite right the way we were, he would have to give us gifts to make us better. If we were the child he wanted and expected us to be, then we wouldn’t need any gifts and be perfectly happy with nothing. The year my sister got a book “How to Win Friends and Influence People” was particularly painful. Of course, her problems with bullying at school were her own fault for not being more winning.

As an adult, I wish I could say that I’ve never had experience with bad gifts again. Unfortunately it isn’t true. I’ve had plenty of gifts given to me that were oblivious or just plain rude. Deodorant is not an acceptable gift on any occasion. Buying gifts for someone that they should really choose for themselves is also a sign of a bad gift. Are you trying to tell them that you know better than they do what they should want? Because that’s a bad look. Also, it’s not acceptable to ask follow-up questions about what happened to the gift. Once it is given the receiver is free to return it or never use it. I suppose if you ask in order to try to learn to give better gifts and will not be offended at any answer, then you can go ahead.

Mostly these days, I have let go of the idea that I am the problem when it comes to bad gift giving. I don’t crave or demand gifts. I’m happy to offer lists to anyone who is willing to actually choose something from the list and not someone who specifically refuses to buy anything from the list because I asked for it and therefore can’t be “surprised” by that. But honestly, I feel like I am the easiest person on the planet to buy gifts for because I love yarn. All kinds of yarn. You cannot buy me a bad yarn. I will find a use for it at some point, I guarantee it. I am delighted by all kinds of yarn!

If you want people not to be angry at you for giving bad gifts, there is a simple solution: give better gifts. This requires some attention and research. I’ve noticed that people who give good gifts take notes all year round. They do this either mentally or in a notebook of some sort. When a loved one exclaims over something they love, they remember later to buy that thing or something related to it. It’s not difficult, if you actually care about doing a good job buying gifts.

The bar for decent gift giving is even lower, however. Just don’t buy something that might be read as an insult. And don’t buy things that someone has loudly proclaimed that they don’t like, however much you imagine that they should like it or that it’s totally abnormal for them to like it. If your daughter wants something you think is masculine, get it anyway. Ditto for the reverse for your sons. There are limits when it comes to dangerous things, I suppose. But don’t buy corrective gifts. Don’t buy things that are necessities that you would have to buy anyway. It doesn’t have to take too much effort, but for God’s sake, don’t wait until the night before to go out shopping because that will be obvious and there won’t be the selection left to get decent gifts for everyone.

And if you, like me, have been subject to years of bad gifts, it doesn’t mean that you are the problem. You aren’t. People determined to tell you what you should want are.