You don’t have to lie to thank someone for a gift you don’t like.
“Thank you so much for thinking of me. I really appreciate the effort you put into choosing and sending this gift.”
I feel sorry for a child whose parent guides them to instead tell the recipient that they have failed. I think actual written thank you letters have become a bit outdated, but we have plenty of other ways to communicate. Why teach your children to hurt people’s feelings on purpose?
Completely, totally and utterly wrong. You say “thank you” for the *kind thoughts. * Not for the “phat lewt”.
You know how there’s those stories focused around the dad that works too hard and the kids act out because he gives them presents but doesn’t actually pay attention to them or stick around much? And how the moral of the story is personal connections mean a lot more to people than random presents?
Exactly.
Presents that show the person knows zip about the recipient are just like that. They’re just fill-ins to replace the actual effort of getting to know and connect with a person. We have these things called phones, letters, and emails and if these people really gave a shit, they’d use one of those to talk to the people they supposedly care so much about rather than send some token gift nobody wants.
hah! But really, they’d get thrown straight into the trash. I send letters so rarely, the cost of stamps is higher every time. Truthfully, it’s worth neither the mental effort or physical space to keep them in my house.
Of course that would be the right thing to do. I’m just frustrated like the OP in having to do anything. I’m trying to get my family to give directly to those who are in need next year, but I think they’ll do some of that, then buy a lot of presents for everybody also.
I really think things like Christmas and birthday presents are for kids. For adults nothing more than token gifts are necessary except for those with an actual need.
Exactly. Why someone would think otherwise is beyond me.
For Christmas I wanted a house, I’ve been wanting one for many years now, but instead my mom made me a jacket and some fun Christmas socks. I guess instead of being grateful and thankful for all the time she put into making them and the usefulness of the jacket and I should tell her she needs to stop trying to morally corrupt me by not getting me a house.
What a hostile reaction to a relative trying to establish a connection with a child. Getting a gift for a kid instead of being a dad is not comparable to an aunt remembering the children of nieces and nephews on a holiday with a present that’s not to their liking. It isn’t the aunt’s job to put some certain amount of “effort” into kids to deserve to get the privilege of trying to please them with gifts. She’s just trying to do something nice, not buy her way out of fulfilling her auntly responsibility.
I was always quite excited to get gifts from distant relatives, not pissed that they didn’t learn English and travel thousands of miles to hang out with me and find out what my favorite cartoon characters were. The idea that I meant something to someone thousands of miles away who had never met me was touching. It didn’t matter what the gift was. It was a tangible token of my relative’s love and so it meant the world to me.
And in fact, a thank you note, or e-mail, or phone call, can be a great way to have some sort of personal communication with someone that you don’t see very often.
And you had been doing so well as of late.
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Doing something which society deems “nice” which is actually insulting or inappropriate, is just a very passive-aggressive way of showing your dissatisfaction or complete lack of interest.
Speaking as an aunt, it absolutely IS the aunt’s job to learn a certain modicum about their neices/nephews, in order to give a gift they will enjoy. I mean, if the goal is doing something nice it is. If the goal is rigging up a system where the relationship is governed by guilt and awkwardness, then just mailing shit at random is the way to go.
Actually there’s no evidence that the OP’s aunt doesnt do exactly that. Remember to her, pretty much all presents are crap.
*
“Almost every gift mostly fills me with the thought “how long do I have to keep this before I can get rid of it without the giver noticing?”,”… I really am just so sick of all the gifts. Surely anybody that’s had to spend any time decluttering has come up against the reality that most Christmas gifts eventually end up in the thrift store or the actual trash.*
I believe it is actually the aunt of the poster who is sending the gifts, not the children’s aunt. She could even more easily display a “complete lack of interest” by doing nothing at all, like most people do for the children of their nieces/nephews.
There is absolutely zero evidence she is sending gifts to “rig up a system” to passive-aggressively send a negative message. More likely she is just making wrong assumptions about what kids like, never dreaming that her poorly-chosen presents are a source of pain and anger for the recipients. Assuming any level of malice is far-fetched.
Oh, BigT. Do you have children? Have you ever had children? The purpose of teaching them to say “please” and “thank you” is that politeness is a hyoo-mon convention: we are not robots, not every statement has to be strictly accurate. If it greases the wheels of human interaction, saying “thank you” for a gift you don’t particularly want isn’t it a lie, and is judged less inappropriate than intoning ** beep boop commence transmission THIS UNIT UNABLE TO VOICE GRATITUDE BECAUSE GIFT DEEMED REDUNDANT beep boop end transmission **