Post holiday decompression: gift giving and gift receiving
January 18, 2022
JB had a reasonable wish list this year. They wrote seven small items in their notebook and I took a picture in case anyone asked for it. A few loved ones did and they each got a truncated portion of the list to reduce possible overlap. Some family have set gifts every year so they didn’t need to ask. I like that because it’s predictable and practical, right up my alley.
This didn’t work out the way I expected. A lot of people went off book this past Christmas and some overwhelmingly so.
We have a one gift per person policy: a consumable for adults; a book, outfit, or money for kids. Everyone else took it to a whole other level: five gifts per kid on average. It made me feel slightly uncomfortable about the inequity and even made JB feel like their special handmade gift for everyone was not as good. They were fooled by the adults putting the kids’ names as the gifters. They really believed that their young (under age 10) cousins bought them fancy gifts. I had to explain that was a polite fiction and that their personal effort in designing, making, and remembering to pack their own gifts was every bit as meaningful.
I was torn between being grateful that JB and Smol are cared about and showered with tangible gifts, a thing I didn’t really have after age 7 or so, and being completely claustrophobic surrounded by so much STUFF. As a kid, I’d get a cheap watch and then my adult cousins would show up with one more to unwrap, or they’d take us to the matinee. That was pretty amazing but I suspect Kid Me would have also chosen the too many gifts scenario if that was on offer. Is adult me past that because I deal with the consequences of all the stuff, or because I deny that Kid Me deserved that feeling of abundance and love?
JB is gratifyingly super vocally enthusiastic about all the gifts, so their gifters enjoy the experience as must as they do, so there’s that. They used to get overwhelmed and overstimulated after the tenth gift, so we’d exercise portion control on opening a couple things each day, but now they could go on for days.
I’ve spent three days decluttering and organizing. It’s still not enough. JB was assigned the task of picking older things they’re prepared to let go of as well. They managed to pick about three things. The one-in one-out rule is being gently enforced because this year they’re old enough to get it. We refuse to live among mess and clutter, daily breaking a path through the toys and books and clothes. There must be some kind of order here, darnit!
I understand the pull and delight of new things, we struggle with it on several levels, but we have to find balance on this together as a family. We talked about how we should be able to live in our home with actual clear surfaces to sit on and work at, how we should be able to walk through the house without tripping over things and kicking or knocking things over. We also talked about how we don’t want to spend ALL our time cleaning things because we have too many things. Here’s hoping that some of this sinks in.
We’re guilty of the giving more than we receive thing. We have a budget of $50/cousin, which we spend mostly on books and also on things listed on their individual amazon wishlists. One good thing we do is send the gifts directly before Christmas so when we do the big family Christmas opening thing it looks like we didn’t buy anybody anything. The cousins also tend to open them when they get them instead of at Christmas, which spreads things out.
We used to get overwhelmed with gifts, but now that there are a lot more grandkids and our kids are older, we haven’t had to put anything in the gift closet for a while. I think DC2 mostly got books and art supplies. DC1 mostly got fidget toys (because zie has been destroying things by fidgeting with them) and books.
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Also all gifts are from adults– the only gifts from children are to the grandparents, and they’re actually gifts from said children. This year DC2 embroidered a tree ornament and DC1 composed a song. (DC1’s default this year was composing songs for adult gift receivers. I wish I could show off his soundcloud!)
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I like the sending of the gifts before Christmas thing. I’d still feel overwhelmed by volume but volume spread out is much more tolerable.
I’m still wondering how much of the old hand me downs I can move out of here this month. Maybe it calls for a big donation even though I tend to try to place things with friends in homes to hopefully ensure it gets used a bit more rather than going to a dump.
I love DC1 and 2’s gifts! How lovely, I’m going to let JB know what they did so they know that other kids also do neat crafty/creative things for gifts and they’re loved as well as expensive toys or whatever.
Our cousins list is about 20 deep, before we count anyone else. I don’t think I could stomach a bigger than $20 budget for everyone if we did gifts for everyone (including a handful of adults). 🥺
There are 6 cousins on ours, and two of them are recent additions. We only do a subset of adults and don’t really have a set $ amount for them.
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These are my belated overthought thoughts 🙂
I am also totally guilty of giving more than receiving because I DGAF if people get me anything, but I like being able to give family members things they’ll actually use and enjoy but might not want to or feel justified in spending the money on themselves. This is probably some kind of love language thing even though I dislike that terminology? On the other hand I also worry about cluttering up other people’s houses with STUFF so I try to think of experience or consumable things when I can and ask parents before getting things that will take up space or need parental participation.
When I was a kid my mom made us paint ornaments for all my parents’ siblings every year (she would buy a bunch of wood cutout ornaments at a craft store and sit us down and make us finish one per kid per aunt/uncle). She sent books to our cousins which I think she put our names on, but mostly we didn’t get gifts from cousins or parents’ siblings and I don’t remember ever thinking it was odd.
Ok I like your style! I can appreciate your position of preferring to give but not caring if you get anything coupled with being conscious about the clutter for others / conferring with parents before buying. That’s the perfect combo IMO.
Conversely on the side of giving less: the folks who give piles and piles also HAVE piles and piles and I have a sneaking suspicion that nothing we give has any meaning for them either.
I wonder where your mom got the idea of doing wood ornaments for everyone every year. I like consistency 🙂