Momma’s 12 Days of Christmas Presents Regifting the Gift Exchange by Debra of September Acres

Debra is a wife and a mom with a passion for design. Join her at September Acres as she finds time to decorate while car-pooling, cooking, and keeping up with the laundry. September Acres can be found on Facebook and on Twitter at @SeptemberAcres.

I love to give and receive gifts as much as the next person.  Really, I do.  But the mass gift exchange is something that perplexes me.  It always has.  You know the ones I’m talking about:  the office Secret Santa where everyone draws names and inevitably you end up with some co-worker you wouldn’t recognize outside of the office, or the family gift exchange where you pick your cousin Prudence, whom you haven’t seen since you were both six.  Call me a Scrooge, but I find these things awkward and impersonal.  At the end of the year, I want to remember people with a gift because we are friends and we care about each other, not because we happen to work for the same company.

I have participated in quite a few office gift exchanges but I had never encountered a family gift exchange until I got married.  My husband is one of 13 children (good Catholic family), and the siblings and their children (and now grandchildren) pick names at Thanksgiving.  (I only have one sister, and the idea of my not buying her a gift at Christmas is foreign.)  Each Thanksgiving for 15 years, we have been given the name of the person for whom we are supposed to buy a gift.  About 80% of the time I end up buying for someone I barely know or maybe haven’t even met.  But, fear not, we can usually get a short list of things the recipient will like.

Last year, I got the impression that some of the siblings might have been feeling this tradition had run its course, when a brother suggested – hold on for this, you might want to start this tradition with your family – that we all buy $25 VISA gift cards, put them in a basket, and have everyone take a card out of the basket when it’s time to open gifts.  Needless to say, that didn’t happen.  We did end up drawing names again and getting gift cards that we thought the recipient would enjoy. Infants and young children still got toys and clothes.

While I don’t find this tradition to be in the spirit of the season, I realize it’s nearly impossible to buy gifts for all of your co-workers, or even a large number of family members, making a gift exchange seem like a nice compromise between hurting feelings and going over your holiday budget. Maybe if we were forced to go to lunch or dinner with our Secret Santa in order to get to know them, I would be more excited about this ritual.  Spending money on someone out of obligation seems odd to me, especially during times when some of us have much less disposable income than we used to have.  Maybe a VISA gift card is exactly what your cousin needs because she will use it to buy gifts for her children.  Or your co-worker will re-gift the coffee mug you got him because his wife was just laid off.  Or your niece will return those earrings so she’ll have money for college text books next semester.  These are things we don’t know about because we don’t know these people.

So, I say ‘ban the gift exchange’. Grab a muffin and coffee with your co-worker or cousin instead and get to know them.  You may make a new best friend or at least know a little something about that person you see in the hall every day.  That sounds more like the spirit of the season to me.

(Note from Momma: Please leave a comment on today’s or ANY Momma’s 12 Days post and be entered to win an Elf Pack, filled with fabulous holiday treats, plus the GRAND PRIZE, a Keurig Platinum Series Brewer!)