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Gift Service Exchanges Online Gifts
Santa's little helper writes "According to this story on New Scientist, it will soon be possible to exchange unwanted Christmas gifts before they are even shipped." I just find this amusing, my favorite part is the
line 'instead of unwrapping presents, we might take turns logging on to a computer'. Click
here for merry christmas.
If anyone has an unwanted RealDoll (preferably unused) feel free to mail me! :)
Trolling is a art,
RichFX, based in New York City, is developing the "virtual gift exchange". The service allows someone to send a virtual greeting card with details of the gift. If it is not up to scratch, the recipient can exchange it for another one at the same store, before it ever gets shipped.
In other news, it was determined that if you told someone what you were going to get them for Christmas before actually buying it, or, better yet, brought them along when you bought their gift, returns and exchanges could be reduced to almost nil.
This, while being a good idea, reduces the whole "spirit of Christmas" down to a gift exchange only. It forces people to miss the point of exchanging gifts, getting together with family, big greasy meal, the whole bit.
Still, from a purely economic standpoint, I'd use it. Imagine, Uncle buys you a $20 widgit, yet, if you will put in $10 of your own money, you upgrade to a $30 widgit which only costs you $10, not $30. In many ways, this is more of an online gift certificate.
How about my email:
I send you this advice....
Happy Birthday, Jesus! Here's a book on C/C++ with an emphasis on AI design!
Somehow, I just don't get it. What is it with people who want to exchange or return gifts? I grew up in a house where you appreciated such things. My first instinct upon getting a present that didn't quite fit or wasn't exactly to my tastes was that I could still find a use for it, not "Hmmmm.. I wonder I can pawn this off and get an XBox!!"
Gifts are gifts. And if youre buying a gift just to throw money at someone in lieu of actually giving a shit about them, you suck in my book. Similarly, if you don't even bother to consider the thought and effort someone else put in to giving you something they felt you'd enjoy, you also suck. Hard.
Bowie J. Poag
target kids with this! You know they'd love that! But the plain and simple fact is you can't throw a 3 year old infront of a monitor and say 'Is that what you want'? Regardless, I'd still rather see my 3 year old's face when hes ripping off that paper and is like 'WHEEEEEE!'(Flash Animation), and you can't deny how funny it is when they realize its clothes and just throw it aside.
Can all fish swim?
after this holiday, i think i might like to trade my family and $10 to upgrade to a new one. anybody interested?
this is getting old and so are you
blog
"You can't use Technology to solve a Social Engineering problem"
I don't know who said it, but I heard it from a professor at college, and remembered it 'cause I realized it was one of those nuggets that should be remembered. Just because you can exchange that ugly sweater your mom got you doesn't mean you should.
Kurdt
I'm not anti-social. Just pro-technology.
When I had to look through my parents bedroom to find out what I was getting for Christmas.
My son will be able to find out what he's getting if I forget to clear my cookies before I go to bed.
"The idea is to let someone give a more personal gift," says RichFX CEO Tal Kerret.
So shopping online, sending someone an email, having that person "exchange" the gift through a web site, and eventually receive it in the mail is somehow more personal than carefully selecting an appropriate gift, getting together for a holiday meal, sitting around talking and laughing, giving the gift from your own hand, and watching the (hopefully) happy expression on the recipients face as the gift is opened.
Did I wake up in the wrong Universe today?
Imagine sending ordering two presents like this, you get your brother an XXX rated DVD, and get your mom some flowers, and switch the cards up.
"Gee son, thanks for the "Hot'n'Horny 18 year olds collection, it's what a mom always wants for Christmas. (Brother in background) "Oh, tell him I said thanks for the flowerth! I didn't know he cared. *sniffs flowers* And oh my goodness, these flowerth are fantathtic! *waggles wrist*
The article also didn't say if you (the buyer) get to see if they (the receiver) changed the gift or not."Hey Tim, man, I sent you a case of deoderant because you stink! And you trade it in for some cologne? C'mon man, cologne only covers up the smell! Now you smell like funky Hugo!"
-- Dan
The thing that makes getting presents nice is the fact that someone took time out of their routine to do something for you. I know American culture demands that we buy more stuff faster, but I don't know how much I appreciate getting gifts that someone ordered on-line at work without even getting out of their chair.
:)
This has been my whole argument against e-cards. It's too easy, I'd much rather get a card that someone spent some time looking for.
Of course, if my grandparents sent me an e-card I would probably appreciate it more than a paper card, because for them it would be more work (and possibly more expensive)
The concept of the article seems like a weird way of solving the problem to me.
I have a big family (I'm 1 of 8 kids), and we do a gift exchange thing every xmas. We ran into troubles with duplicate gifts being given and slightly wrong gifts ("I wanted a small red one but you bought a big blue one instead").
So last year I hacked together some php to maintain online wishlists for everybody. Each person gets an account and maintains their own wishlist. Other people can check off items from their list to mark them as being purchased (eliminates the dupe gift problem). You can't see what's checked off on your own list, but everyone else can.
It worked out well last year, I hacked it a little more this year, and have plans for a better wishlist system next year (generic event wishlists plus some other nice frills).
(There's also giftweb at sourceforge which I originally looked at (and sent a patch), but later scrapped it as I was too far along on my own hackish solution.)
A gift says as much about the giver as the recip and should be kept as a memento at least (for a while anyway). The only reason for returns is if it the wrong size or something.
324006
for your xmas gift, please look to the attachment!
Can your IM do this?
Something like this would rate even lower then a gift certificate, it basically amounts to "I can't be bothered to spend any time thinking about you and what you might want, so instead I give you money - in a nice frame."
The only difference this system will make, is that now you take away the nice frame. If you give this to anyone you like, you shouldn't be surprised of the consequences. :)
Providing a service nobody wants - via the internet - wooohoo - sounds like a future failed business to me.
Christmas was three days ago.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
We're just too occupied with them. That's why gift giving (and gift receiving) is so hard. We're supposed to know what we want on this arbitrarily-chosen day, and we're supposed to know what others expect.
Each and every year, deficit consumer spending increases unfailingly. The level of desperation increases as the Big Day comes closer. People argue, fight, kill, steal, lie, and defraud in order to have a Merry Christmas. Now the human element can be removed completely with a service that allows for automated exchanges.
All this to commemorate the birth of the man (the God?) whose life was an example of salvation from the concept of "mine". This is why I don't cringe or lash out with anger when Usama ibn Laden calls us the Great Satan.
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
Jack buys Jill a $500 bracelet for Christmas. Jill buys Jack a $500 arc-welder. Jack decides he doesn't like his arc-welder, and goes online and switches his gift for a PS2 and 4 games. Jill decides she doesn't like her bracelet and switches it for a gucci handbag.
What's the point of giving a gift at this point. They might have well exchanged $500 gift certificates. But even that would be pointless, because it's just an even swap. They might as well keep their money and just spend it on themselves, and save each other a whole bunch of time.
That's the problem with gifts in a society such as ours. I prefer to have gifts be things that no one else can provide. I created a video for my family this Christmas. I have made cookies, and burned CD's of the texts of ancient books for people. Something unique, something I had to put my own effort into creating.
And with Jack and Jill, what's the need to know anything about what the person *really* wants? After all, they can just exchange it for whatever they do want. So I don't have to muck about getting to know them so I might be in touch with what they like.
These days, gift-giving is a form of commerce. It is a business transaction, carried out not in a boardroom, but a living room. But it requires "fair exchange". It requires that we get what we want, otherwise the gift is useless. "It's the thought that counts." But that is a cliche. It's the love behind the thought that counts. Because where there is that love, the gift can be given and received with joy and freedom. Then, I don't need to receive anything back, I don't need to exchange it, I don't need to feel cheated.
The Gift Of The Magi, by o'henry
One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty- seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.
There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.
While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a look at the home. A furnished flat at $8 per week. It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that word on the lookout for the mendicancy squad.
In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter would go, and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name "Mr. James Dillingham Young."
The "Dillingham" had been flung to the breeze during a former period of prosperity when its possessor was being paid $30 per week. Now, when the income was shrunk to $20, though, they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming D. But whenever Mr. James Dillingham Young came home and reached his flat above he was called "Jim" and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Young, already introduced to you as Della. Which is all very good.
Della finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the window and looked out dully at a gray cat walking a gray fence in a gray backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving every penny she could for months, with this result. Twenty dollars a week doesn't go far. Expenses had been greater than she had calculated. They always are. Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her Jim. Many a happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for him. Something fine and rare and sterling--something just a little bit near to being worthy of the honor of being owned by Jim.
There was a pier-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have seen a pier-glass in an $8 flat. A very thin and very agile person may, by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal strips, obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks. Della, being slender, had mastered the art.
Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass. her eyes were shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its color within twenty seconds. Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length.
Now, there were two possessions of the James Dillingham Youngs in which they both took a mighty pride. One was Jim's gold watch that had been his father's and his grandfather's. The other was Della's hair. Had the queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft, Della would have let her hair hang out the window some day to dry just to depreciate Her Majesty's jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been the janitor, with all his treasures piled up in the basement, Jim would have pulled out his watch every time he passed, just to see him pluck at his beard from envy.
So now Della's beautiful hair fell about her rippling and shining like a cascade of brown waters. It reached below her knee and made itself almost a garment for her. And then she did it up again nervously and quickly. Once she faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear or two splashed on the worn red carpet.
On went her old brown jacket; on went her old brown hat. With a whirl of skirts and with the brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she fluttered out the door and down the stairs to the street.
Where she stopped the sign read: "Mne. Sofronie. Hair Goods of All Kinds." One flight up Della ran, and collected herself, panting. Madame, large, too white, chilly, hardly looked the "Sofronie."
"Will you buy my hair?" asked Della.
"I buy hair," said Madame. "Take yer hat off and let's have a sight at the looks of it."
Down rippled the brown cascade.
"Twenty dollars," said Madame, lifting the mass with a practised hand.
"Give it to me quick," said Della.
Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed metaphor. She was ransacking the stores for Jim's present.
She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else. There was no other like it in any of the stores, and she had turned all of them inside out. It was a platinum fob chain simple and chaste in design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by meretricious ornamentation--as all good things should do. It was even worthy of The Watch. As soon as she saw it she knew that it must be Jim's. It was like him. Quietness and value--the description applied to both. Twenty-one dollars they took from her for it, and she hurried home with the 87 cents. With that chain on his watch Jim might be properly anxious about the time in any company. Grand as the watch was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the old leather strap that he used in place of a chain.
When Della reached home her intoxication gave way a little to prudence and reason. She got out her curling irons and lighted the gas and went to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love. Which is always a tremendous task, dear friends--a mammoth task.
Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls that made her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her reflection in the mirror long, carefully, and critically.
"If Jim doesn't kill me," she said to herself, "before he takes a second look at me, he'll say I look like a Coney Island chorus girl. But what could I do--oh! what could I do with a dollar and eighty- seven cents?"
At 7 o'clock the coffee was made and the frying-pan was on the back of the stove hot and ready to cook the chops.
Jim was never late. Della doubled the fob chain in her hand and sat on the corner of the table near the door that he always entered. Then she heard his step on the stair away down on the first flight, and she turned white for just a moment. She had a habit for saying little silent prayer about the simplest everyday things, and now she whispered: "Please God, make him think I am still pretty."
The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and very serious. Poor fellow, he was only twenty-two--and to be burdened with a family! He needed a new overcoat and he was without gloves.
Jim stopped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of quail. His eyes were fixed upon Della, and there was an expression in them that she could not read, and it terrified her. It was not anger, nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments that she had been prepared for. He simply stared at her fixedly with that peculiar expression on his face.
Della wriggled off the table and went for him.
"Jim, darling," she cried, "don't look at me that way. I had my hair cut off and sold because I couldn't have lived through Christmas without giving you a present. It'll grow out again--you won't mind, will you? I just had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast. Say `Merry Christmas!' Jim, and let's be happy. You don't know what a nice-- what a beautiful, nice gift I've got for you."
"You've cut off your hair?" asked Jim, laboriously, as if he had not arrived at that patent fact yet even after the hardest mental labor.
"Cut it off and sold it," said Della. "Don't you like me just as well, anyhow? I'm me without my hair, ain't I?"
Jim looked about the room curiously.
"You say your hair is gone?" he said, with an air almost of idiocy.
"You needn't look for it," said Della. "It's sold, I tell you--sold and gone, too. It's Christmas Eve, boy. Be good to me, for it went for you. Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered," she went on with sudden serious sweetness, "but nobody could ever count my love for you. Shall I put the chops on, Jim?"
Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his Della. For ten seconds let us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the other direction. Eight dollars a week or a million a year--what is the difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you the wrong answer. The magi brought valuable gifts, but that was not among them. This dark assertion will be illuminated later on.
Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the table.
"Don't make any mistake, Dell," he said, "about me. I don't think there's anything in the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that could make me like my girl any less. But if you'll unwrap that package you may see why you had me going a while at first."
White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper. And then an ecstatic scream of joy; and then, alas! a quick feminine change to hysterical tears and wails, necessitating the immediate employment of all the comforting powers of the lord of the flat.
For there lay The Combs--the set of combs, side and back, that Della had worshipped long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoise shell, with jewelled rims--just the shade to wear in the beautiful vanished hair. They were expensive combs, she knew, and her heart had simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope of possession. And now, they were hers, but the tresses that should have adorned the coveted adornments were gone.
But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look up with dim eyes and a smile and say: "My hair grows so fast, Jim!"
And them Della leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, "Oh, oh!"
Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present. She held it out to him eagerly upon her open palm. The dull precious metal seemed to flash with a reflection of her bright and ardent spirit.
"Isn't it a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town to find it. You'll have to look at the time a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch. I want to see how it looks on it."
Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hands under the back of his head and smiled.
"Dell," said he, "let's put our Christmas presents away and keep 'em a while. They're too nice to use just at present. I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs. And now suppose you put the chops on."
The magi, as you know, were wise men--wonderfully wise men--who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. O all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.
Robotiq.com is heavily tested on animals
Xmas has it's origin the great Yule feast of the Norsemen and Roman Saturnalia. It didn't have anything to do with gift giving until the Victorians got ahold of it. It wasn't really until 1890 that Santa Claus got twisted into the tool of unbridled consumerism that he is today. The majority of current Xmas traditions are less than 100 years old.
What's wrong with all the giving? I like to give presents to people who need them or are particularly suited to them. So now once a year I'm supposed to go out and do it for everyone I know all at once. A near impossible feat to do.
This summer I was eating steak at my Uncle's house. He didn't have a decent steak knife in his house. I went out and bought him a set of steak knives that day. Xmas rolls around, and I don't know what he needs and I haven't seen anything that suits his character, but I'm coerced by a capitalist society to go and do the american thing and "buy" him something.
Point is I buy my friends and family things all through the year, when I see the need or find something particularly suited to them. Should I hoarde it till Xmas? Odds are my Uncle would have gone and bought some steak knifes before Xmas or he wouldn't have got to use the ones I got him for 6 months.
Also about half the stuff I get is worthless to me and of no value but the occupation of space. What's the point in that? Objects that don't work as advertised that people bought in haste to complete some ritual developed by industrial marketing.
Same for Xmas cards. If you don't have time to write me a letter, don't bother. In eastern Europe it's considered insulting to send a card that's just signed without a long letter. Let's people know how little you think of them. A bunch of cards with signatures is interesting decoration, but worthless to me in terms of contact. More fodder for the card industry.
I moved recently and inventoried everything I own. Many items I still hang onto as momentos of old friendships and times long gone. Almost none of those items with sentimental attachment came at Xmas.
It's fun as a kid to get a bunch of toys under a tree and I have nothing against this whole Santa Claus thing for a bit of play and fun. But as adults, this exhange before receipt is just another wake up call to the bogusness of this holiday tradition of "giving."
Xmas is about having a big feast with your family and recapping the year. You get to watch children get overstimulated by too much excitement and toys.
P.S. Xmas was considered so pagan that it didn't become a legal holiday in the U.S. until 1836. In the 1600's armies were sent around to pull down the pagan Xmas trees.
I used to wonder what was so holy about a silent night, now I have a child.
Such as fruitcake.
Infuriate left and right
The Gift of the Magi Indian Giver
Truly heartwarming!
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
As some people mentioned, America is a gift giving culture. The insideousness of the whole gift giving culture is it de-values intangible things like friendship, love, loyalty and appreciation into 1 or several objects. Though I doubt our culture will change over-night, I hope more people resort to making their gifts instead of buying it. I would rather cook my family a gourmet meal for christmas, than buy some stupid gizmo.
On the recieving side, I prefer something that is memorable and not an object that will break and be thrown away.
That's the problem with gifts in a society such as ours. I prefer to have gifts be things that no one else can provide. I created a video for my family this Christmas. I have made cookies, and burned CD's of the texts of ancient books for people. Something unique, something I had to put my own effort into creating.
;)
Can You get me a gift next year?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I've got this aunt. She lives in New Jersey, which should explain a lot.
So, one xmas, when I was about 12, me and my brothers all get similar looking presents. I opened mine first. Removal of the paper revealed a Pringles can (I forget the flavor).
"Oh," I thought, "she used Pringles cans as shipping containers." Already a little nutty, but sort of resourceful.
So I open my can, expecting anything but what was inside: Pringles. Pringles that had been shipped from NJ to CA. Pringles that had been pulverized into Pringle dust.
I guess maybe she thought we didn't have prigles here or something. Maybe that New Jersey air was to blame. I never had the nuts to ask what the hell she was thinking.
If I could have tossed that $1.25 or so at a shipping fee for something non-pringles online, I would have. It's not that I'm an ingrate, it's that some people are genuinely insane.
there's more than one way to do me.
Every year millions of people go out and buy each other gifts, because it is "the thing to do" for one day of the year.
/. posting about what I got for Christmas this year. All of it was well received, don't get me wrong. Of it all, the clothes were really what I needed most. The other stuff I got, I had asked for. One of the items seemed to be a thoughtful thing (the key fob thing) - which is something I like. And the stuff I bought myself? Well, was it really for Christmas...?
How sad.
I will speak of America, because it is what I know, because I live here.
We go to malls, to stores - many of them identical to each other. Even malls in different states are identical to each other (I was truely saddened when I went to the "Mall of America" for the first time - and "Tada!" - it looked like all of the malls here in Phoenix - only bigger - BFD!). So, gifts are bought and exchanged - gifts that could have been bought nearly anywhere in America - so identical.
Sometimes, when the giver doesn't know what the givee wants or needs - a gift certificate is given: Red Lobster, Chilis, Black Angus, Dennys, McDonalds. And that is just the food! For others, it is B&N, Amazon, Home Depot, Sears, Frys Electronics, CompUSA, etc. And for the truely challenged: cash.
Whatever happened to the love? Did it get bought and sold too? I have a sneaking suspicion it did...
I made a comment on an earlier
And the things I gave in return? Some of them had thought - but many were things asked for. What does that say? It saddens me...
Next year I want to try something harder, and I hope others do the same for me. I want to give a gift that when looked upon, it reminds the person of the thought and love that went into it, in either selecting it, or making it. Indeed, I may make gifts next year...
I once got a gift from a friend, that to this day means a lot to me. My friend told me he made it in shop class for me (long time ago in high school) - it was a little wooden incense box/burner. It is something I cherish to this day (recently I thought I lost it - I wasn't sure if I had, but I thought I did - the thought was nearly unbearable - I found it not too long ago).
I recently gave a friend of mine a handmade gift for his birthday - an origami "puzzle" box, with various small gifts contained inside (thus, the gift was both the container and wrapping in one). I spent several days thinking of what to put in it, and on it, and several hours constructing it. I hope he appreciated it for what it is (I think he did - he showed it to everyone it seemed).
I want to do that next year - use my skills to create unique gifts...
It won't be easy, but labors of love rarely are.
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
I like how they're labeled "Rated For 200,000 Hours (more than 20 years of continuous use)" Seems like just the think to jazz up the workstation anytime of the year at an el-cheapo price tag.
Just had to share. Ok, you can now mod me to off-topic hell.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Which is exactly what my sister and I have taken to doing. Every year we agree to buy ourselves a CD, give it to the other to wrap, and then open it on Christmas morning to please our parents. I love her to death, but she knows as little about the techno I listen to as I do about the indie rock she listens to. If it were up to us, we wouldn't exchange gifts at all.
Well, maybe that's a little strong. I'd like to have a gathering where everybody brings something from a very specific category. Cheese is my favorite food - what if everyone picked out a cheese they'd never heard of and we all shared them? This would work well with beers, wines, cigars....
Too bad I'm lazy.
grep -ri 'should work'
Having said that, for those of us who hate paying full price for anything, the weeks immediately after xmas are a goldmine! Now am I part of the problem or what...
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Every year, I find myself disliking Christmas more and more, exactly because of the impersonality that seems built-in to the model. I think this year was particularly bad because of the exhortations to spend out of patriotism (buck up the economy and all that). The modern goal of Christmas is to spend, spend, spend and get, get, get, and to be honest I find myself, in that final shopping rush, looking for what I call 'respectable' gifts, instead of the kind of personal, lovely gift I really do want to give. What I call a 'respectable gift' is one that costs about the 'right amount of money' -- not so much that I am uncomfortable with it, but not so little that the recipient will think I am cheap. It seems impossible to hit the target correctly -- probably (to take a metaphor a couple of steps too far) because the arrow is bent, and hitting the target with a bent arrow would be pure chance.
I don't think the system mentioned in the article will make this phenomenon go away. I think it will make the phenomenon worse. It becomes even easier to put less thought into the gift. It makes it easier to 'scorekeep' monetarily ("Damn! He bought me a $50 present, and I spent a lousy $15 on him... I better get him something else"). It turns gift-giving and gift-receiving into a commodities market, where you buy futures ("I think Joe will like a CD this year!"), watch whether the recipient bargains up or down, and finally whether the recipient finally orders what you bought... for delivery a few days later, of course, pre-wrapped for them at the factory.
The root problem, really, is time. Do you have the time to make truly personal gifts for all your gift recipients? I'm not talking cookies -- I've discovered that homemade cookies don't cut it as a Christmas gift, unfortunately ;) I'm a divorced mother, and I'm doing well some nights to find time to make myself dinner. Americans on average put in more hours at work than any other industrialized nation, and it's only growing -- just about everyone is feeling a time crunch.
I'd also bet most of us live hundreds of miles away from most of our relatives. Once upon a time, most of your family would live in one town, and you would know much more (perhaps too much) about all of them. Now, you might see relatives a few times a year.
Be honest -- how much time do you spend with your friends that is comprised of more than LAN gaming, shop talk, or non-interactive movie-watching? How much time do you really spend with your spouse, your parents, your aunts and uncles? Given this, on what basis would you select a really appropriate gift for him or her? Hence 'commodity giving' and 'respectable' gifts -- and gift receipts, and gift certificates, and online gift wish lists.
The effect, for me, is a lingering dissatisfaction with my own efforts (or lack thereof), which leaks over into dissatisfaction with the season and the shallowness of the way we celebrate it.
The article is just too much.
What's more important for you? To get a present from someone who think about you? or what is it you get from anyone?
When my family and friend send me a present, I really don't think the important thing is what they are sending. It's the feeling that someone thought about me and put time choosing something for me. In one way, it is not MY present. It is THEIR present. I wouldn't want anything to change about that.
PPA, the girl next door.
-- I feel better now. Thanks for asking.