Gifty-Showers Suck

[Dangerosa]

@Lightray

That’s why everybody gossips about people who don’t send thank-you cards – it’s freakin’ easy and they damn well know that your mother raised you better than that*.

• substitute appropriate developmental authority figure, if necessary.

My mother actually raised me to think they weren’t necessary under most circumstances.

I write them far more often than I was trained to write them (and I don’t write them nearly as often as I SHOULD - I’m sort of random in my thank you notes). I’ll write them for visits and dinners and parties (occationally and randomly) and completely miss them for gifts sent through the mail (when you SHOULD write them if for nothing else than to let the sender know they arrived).

[Cat_Whisperer]

@Rubystreak

I can’t believe there is any controversy here. Someone gives you a nice gift, you send a thank you note. The occasion (shower, wedding, whatever) is irrelevant.

I agree; there is no controversy here. If you weren’t raised in a culture where you send thank-you notes for all gifts, then you don’t send them and no one thinks a thing of it. No controversy at all.

[Kimstu]

@featherlou

If you weren’t raised in a culture where you send thank-you notes for all gifts, then you don’t send them and no one thinks a thing of it.

Um, as long as you’re still in that culture, of course. If you’re still not sending thank-you notes for gifts when you’re in a different culture where thank-you notes are customary, it’s probably mistaken to believe that “no one thinks a thing of it”. A lot of people will think of it, and what they’ll think won’t be flattering.

[DrDeth]

@Dangerosa

I think they are left from an era and class where we had time for the social nicities of a note, and much was done by note. You’d visit and leave your card if no one was home because you couldn’t call. Gifts were not opened in front of the person who gave it to you, and wedding gifts and the like were sent under seperate cover.

Certainly, people should be thanked for their gift, but we are sending thank you notes because we are taught we should. In an era of phone and email, where you open your gift in front of your guests, thank you notes are a quaint tradition. There isn’t any reason why a phone call or email or thanking them in person shouldn’t carry the same information. But a thank you note still carries weight. I don’t know for how much longer.

You make a good point. Of course, they are not done when gifts are exchanged or when the gifts are trifling (like the “gag gifts” at an “over-the-hill” or batchelor party).

Unless my gift was particulary lavish*, I do not expect a note if you open it in front of me and say “thanks” then. But since wedding gifts are usually opened after, then the note is a must-do, if nothing else to confirm the expected recipient got it.

*(If I have given you a new car, then hell yes, I expect a personally hand-caligraphied and Illuminated note on real parchment- or a blow job. )

[Cat_Whisperer]

@Kimstu

Um, as long as you’re still in that culture, of course. If you’re still not sending thank-you notes for gifts when you’re in a different culture where thank-you notes are customary, it’s probably mistaken to believe that “no one thinks a thing of it”. A lot of people will think of it, and what they’ll think won’t be flattering.

Well, fortunately, I still am. I’ll worry about this when I move to the U.S. (i.e. never).

[Rubystreak]

@featherlou

I agree; there is no controversy here. If you weren’t raised in a culture where you send thank-you notes for all gifts, then you don’t send them and no one thinks a thing of it. No controversy at all.

What culture is this? Your family? Your community? I can’t believe this is a Canada-wide phenomenon.

[Cat_Whisperer]

I can’t speak for all of Canada, of course (they still won’t let me), but in my 40 years living in Western Canada, we don’t send thank-you notes for any gifts but wedding gifts. I have never received or expected a thank-you note for any gift other than a wedding gift, and I have never sent one for any gift other than a wedding gift. Eastern Canada may be different, but I’m not moving there, either.