I wouldn’t mind it. I’m not a big believer in the “It’s Christmas and you must exchange gifts.” mindset anyway. Aside from your kids, no you really don’t. Try it.
In my family, we’ve chosen to dispense with the “nice” gift exchange (which was becoming a gift card exchange) among the adults and spend a long weekend with all the kids in a chalet in the mountains in the summer instead. We do a White Elephant gift exchange as well, but it’s done solely for laughs. The funnier the gift, the better. (If you want to know where to find a concrete Elvis bust, I know where you can get one.)
My suggestion is that if you really want to give someone a gift, and they don’t need a thing, offer up your time instead. Schedule a date to do something you both enjoy, such as dinner and a play, or shopping at the outlet malls. But if they really don’t need anything, why not just decide between the two of you to dispense with the gift exchange altogether?
Hey, there are plenty of good alternatives to traditional gifts. My wife and I often give the gift of a surprise weekend to each other. Or abolish gifts completely. Whatever. But this ‘giving in your name’ stuff doesn’t sit well with me. Give in your own name. I’m not discouraging the giving, but do it in your own name, please, not mine.
If all you can afford for me is a sincere handshake and a heartfelt Happy Holidays or other expression of goodwill, that’s great. And very meaningful. Much more meaningful than giving money to a charity and unctuously telling me: “That was from you.” The hell. It was from you. I wasn’t involved at all.
It’s the thought behind the gift that counts. That is YOUR thought not giving any thought to them. Unless they specifically say “I want to give some money to XXX for Christmas.”
Instead give them a Visa/MC gift card and they can charge the donation to the charity of their choice if they so choose
A solution that might solve some of the issues related to charity donations as Christmas presents is Network for Good’s Good Cards. They get to pick from any charity on the site.
I would love it if my family did this (not necessarily the Good Card thing, but making donations in general) instead of buying crap for each other. I’m nervous about breaking the traditions, as some people feel pretty strongly attached to the idea of holiday gift-giving. Hopefully I’ll work up the courage next year.
My first Christmas with my ex . . . I had already bought him several nice gifts, when he came to me and said he didn’t know what to get me, and would it be ok if he gave to a charity instead. What was I going to say, No? So we picked a charity. Christmas morning we joined friends of our to open gifts (each couple only gave to each other). Everyone else had great gifts and all I got was a card. I’m glad the charity got the money, but I did feel kinda left out . . . especially since I gave my ex way more than he deserved, but that’s another thread.
If the person is secretly thinking that it’s an easy way to get out of real gift-giving, then that is not what the person really wants. The person really wants to not have to buy someone a present that involves effort. By “what the person wants” I pretty much meant just that; that is, the person would like to receive a charitable donation as a present, and not that the does not want that, but is a bit relieved because now he doesn’t have to bother with real shopping.
Hopefully, when giving gifts to people you care about, you know them well enough to know if giving a donation to one of their choice charities is a gift they’d actually want. If unsure, like I said, just buy them some shit from The Gap, or whatever else you’re fairly certain they’ll be fine with.
This is the original problem. I don’t care if they want me to give a gift to someone else on their behalf. I already give enough to charity on my own behalf. Now I want to give something to them. THEM. Really actually to them, them, them. Not to someone else on their behalf. I have imagination and creativity and I can get/create a gift for them. It will not be “some shit from the GAP”, or something else “they’ll be fine with.” It will be something imaginative, and often will not be a physical thing that’ll add clutter to their home. I may occasionally miss the mark with my choices, but not often.
In general, I care very much about what they want. However, I don’t care if they want me to give a gift to someone else on their behalf, instead of giving them a gift. I’m going to give them a gift. Them. Not someone else. No combination of charitable giving and gift giving. I do enough charitable giving already; they can do their own. If they don’t want to exchange gifts with me at all, that’s cool, too. We can share a drink or just a heartfelt wishing of well. In no way do I insist on encouraging the commercialization of Christmas.
Additionally, my gift-giving philosophy is not necessarily to give people what they want, but rather, to use my imagination. I love a surprise.
Yeah. I like being creative and giving one of a kind things… if the thing I find is something the person would want. Others, if asked what they want, will show exactly what they want. Fine with me. It’s what they want.
Well, you’re like me, then. I don’t know if you’ve read all of my tiresome posts, but I think it’s pretty obvious that I value charity as well. Very highly. But sometimes I want to do something nice for someone in my own life, and if I know that they don’t value things, I’m very sensitive to that, and I choose my gift to that person appropriately. However, giving my gift to them to someone else instead I won’t do. I can give someone a wide variety of gifts that are not “things”. And I do not necessarily have to limit myself to giving them whatever it is they value most highly.
Seriously, however, I don’t actually feel as strongly about this subject as it might seem. I don’t honestly see any bad here. Any giving is good giving, my nauseatingly contrarian grain notwithstanding. But I just cannot donate as a gift to someone.
Hubby specifically asked for a donation to The Heifer Project for Christmas this year. All the remodeling and moving around, he is keenly aware of how much Stuff he has and would rather give to others in need than get more Stuff. So, I honored that and made a decent donation in his name, but also bought him a DVD and CD I know he’ll like so he has something to unwrap from me.
So if one of your dear friends (either to you, or you are within ear shot of when someone asks him/her about what s/he would like for Christmas) said, “Honestly, I really only would want a donation towards The Human Society/Heifer/Kiva/whatever. It really is my favorite charity and does so much good. All I want to do is help them out as much as I can.”…
I still probably wouldn’t donate, but I wouldn’t necessarily “buy them something.” I might, for example, do a little research, and see whether someone important was coming to town to give a talk related to animal rights/cruelty prevention*, world hunger, sustainability or microfinancing. Or maybe there was an upcoming seminar. I’d get them two tickets. If it was someone dear to me, I might try to get the tickets to the event in a neighboring town, so they (or we – depends) could make a day of it, my treat. There are usually alternatives to just buying some junk. If they’re truly devoted to these causes, there are probably also books/documentaries/periodicals that would greatly interest them and keep them up-to-date with what’s happening in that area. Sometimes there are also Web subscriptions. But just giving some money to the cause? Doesn’t sit well with me as a gift, although I’m not militantly opposed to it or anything. Geez, I don’t actually have a really strong opinion about this. I’m not drawing a line in the sand or anything.
In any case, I find your example a bit extreme. “All I want to do is help them out as much as I can.” I guess if they make it absolutely clear that they will not accept gifts that are not donations, well… hell, I finally broke down and accepted ‘party’ as a verb. I guess I can get used to anything.
I’m assuming you meant Humane Society. My apologies if I was wrong.
But then you are expressly spending time, effort and maybe even money to find a way to not give them what they asked for. That doesn’t strike you as a little off? Whatever you do is supposed to make them happy, and clearly a donation would do that.
Let’s use a less extreme example. Let’s say someone, oh, I dunno, me said, “I don’t want anything. I would strongly prefer that you not buy me a gift. If you want to warm my cockles, help some sick kid or donate blood or give to Doctors Without Borders or something,” would you still try your best to come up with some creative trinket for me, or would you just give me what I want, which is a charitable contribution?