I don’t drink at all, really - I had a sip of champagne at my sister’s wedding, but that’s been it for me this year. Happily, I have friends and lovers who drink, so it’s almost never a problem finding someone who wants to take it off my hands. I only receive alcohol from people who either a) know I will just serve it at parties or b) don’t know me well enough to get offended when I choose not to drink it myself.
And, having played fairy drunkmother to people who have over-imbibed on more than one occasion, I still don’t get the self-righteous furor upthread. Alcohol lowers inhibitions, but it is not the root of all evil. Comparing it with heroin is like comparing being homeless with being a serial arsonist: sure, both involve buildings (at least tangentially), so they must be just the same, right?
I am not Jewish, but no Jewish person I’ve ever known would consider a gift of gourmet pork sausages *offensive * (strange perhaps) - I’m pretty sure they would just say something like “Thanks, but I don’t eat pork”, or just “Thanks!” followed by regifting to someone who would appreciate it (I love a good sausage myself). I cannot imagine anyone taking the sausages and pushing them into the garbage disposal in front of everyone, as people are suggesting be done with alcohol.
As I understand it, certain practitioners of Islam feel that cannot touch liquor (or the bottle it comes in) - and I would guess there are other religions (i.e. some Baptists) that would feel similarly - an alcohol prohibition isn’t THAT unusual. If I don’t realize you have that restriction, I - as a giver of the gift - would feel far more embarrassed if you took it and I discovered the prohibition later than if you just immediately returned it with “its a lovely thought, but I can’t take it.” I don’t expect people to go against their morals or ethics or religious beliefs for the sake of politeness. - To me its similar to serving a Hindu beef. I teach my kids that its polite when they go to someone’s house to at least TRY everything on their plate - but if one of them suddenly converts, I wouldn’t expect politeness (in terms of eating it) to rank above a religious prohibition (politeness in refusing it is to be expected.) (I can still get a pang of guilt over my ex husband feeding a friend of his a pie I made - the friend kept kosher - the pie crust was lard based)
Moreover, as someone who has been the recipient of “inappropriate gifts from men” - it is always appropriate to turn down jewelry from a married man trying to get in ones pants for instance.
So there are several reasons why rejecting the gift would be the more proper thing to do than accepting it. Etiquette is fine and good, but its not meant to trump your own ethics and morals.
If you feel strongly about it, say “I’m sorry, I can’t accept this gift” (with or without explanation why) – but for fuck’s sake, don’t accept the gift and then ostentatiously dispose of it in the giver’s presence!
Once again, in this thread, I stand corrected. In fact, now that you mention married men trying to seduce young women with trinkets, I can think of lots of other instances when one would reject a gift. I am not accepting any hand grenades for a million dollars!
But I am the same woman who ate a chunk of beef when offered to me by a South African co worker’s wife because I knew that some African cultures consider refusing offered food to be a personal slight, but I didn’t know which cultures practiced this. So I erred on the side of caution. That was the first chunk of meat I had eaten in 13 years.
So yeah, I may be kind of overboard on this “accept the damn gift” thing.
My last boss was a wine enthusiast who made his own wine, as well as being quite a good boss. At Christmas last year or the year before, he gave each of us who worked for him a bottle of homemade wine. I’m not much of a drinker, so I gave it to my mother who said it was very good. When my boss asked how I liked it, I said “we” enjoyed it very much, since I couldn’t give the wine the appreciation it deserved. To me, pouring that bottle of wine down the sink would have been every bit as offensive as someone throwing something I’d knitted for them in the trash because they’re allergic to wool (another coworker was).
Attitudes towards alcohol do differ and I actually have encountered attitudes similar to ftg’s among alcoholics in the very early stages of recovery and some fundamentalist Christians, as I recall. I haven’t done so very often, and I don’t care for the self-righteous tone of that attitude. Cultural hybrid that I am, I’ve never fully understood the more extreme American attitudes towards alcohol (yes, I’ve heard they exist among Methodists in England as well). If you don’t drink, that’s fair enough. My father doesn’t and I seldom do. On the other hand, if you don’t drink, find the very notion of alcohol offensive and insult those who make an innocent mistake, you’re not someone I care to associate with.
I feel somewhat difference. As far as I’m concerned, if you hang out in a crowd where insulting someone who is doing something he or she sees as kind is acceptable, you need a new crowd.
The only appropriate response to a gift (according the etiquette) is to say, “Thank you.” If you can’t use it or don’t like it, you can do whatever you want with it once the giver is out of sight. Alcohol is actually a pretty easy gift to deal with – you can regift it, or save it to serve to others, or use it to cook with. This is why it’s such a popular hostess gift (along with candy or flowers) – because it’s so generic.
Now, etiquette does offer some individual flexibility. If you are given a gift you cannot accept – booze to a recovering alcoholic who can’t keep the stuff in the house, say, or to an observant Muslim who cannot touch it for religious reasons – then you may politely decline the gift. But you still have to say thank you: “Thank you, but I’m afraid I can’t accept this. I can’t have alcohol in my home. Please take it home with you and enjoy it yourself. And thank you again for your thoughtfulness.”
But while this is acceptable under those particular circumstances (a gift which cannot be accepted), it isn’t optimal from an etiquette perspective, because it is still going to be a bit awkward for the gift giver. If you can accept it, but just don’t like it, then you should just take it, with thanks, and do with it what you will after the giver has departed.
If appropriate (like they bring them to my house), I open the bottle then and there and let everyone enjoy it.
I am ethically prohibited from accepting gifts at my place of employment and the Chief Counsel is a real nazi about it so I send any and all gifts back to my clients with a thank you card. I send more than a few bottles of booze back every Christmas. I mean, I don’t drink and on top of that I could get fired so it’s an obvious decision.
I always thank anyone for any gift I get. Unless I one day got the gift of gonorrhea. I’m pretty certain I’d be sulky about that one.
I’m with the crowd that believes that the only appropriate response to a gift is a gracious “Thank you.” I can’t imagine anything else actually being OK at the moment of gift giving. What one does with it - discard, serve to guests, cook with it, regift it, drink it to survive the holidays, doesn’t matter. Gifts are a kindness from someone else, a way to let someone know they’re thought of.
Wine is a generic gift that often serves as something to give people one doesn’t know well enough to know their tastes. Unfortunately, people don’t always know the gift-ee well enough that they don’t realize they don’t drink. But I sincerely doubt anyone would on purpose try to offend someone by a gift of alcohol. In time, Like Annie-Xmas just pointed out, people learn more about others in time, and typically adjust their gift-giving accordingly.
I had a great great grandmother when I was a young kid. She used to offer me ribbon candy that I wouldn’t eat on a dare. I thought I was being polite saying “no thank you.” I was taught pretty quick that the polite thing to do was to accept the candy, and ditch it later. No kids were going to starve in Africa because of this mild deception.
Man, I hated those ribbon candies so bad. My aunt Amantha had a house full of candy dishes of all kinds. Crystal candy dishes, brass candy dishes, hanging candy dishes, crouching candy dishes. My dad would have been disgusted with me if he knew how much I scrunched my nose up at her offers of gooey, old ass stuck together chunks of sugary minty nastiness. If I could turn back time, I would be a lot nicer to ol’ Aunt Amantha, rest her soul.
I am always a bit confused by statements like :
My ethics and morals are the reason why I use propper manners! They are the inner compass that guide me not to be rude or to hurt others. I don’t see how etiquette could trump my morals and ethics
Well, if etiquette is “you always accept a gift” and the gift is inappropriate jewelry from a guy who wants to get in your pants - then your morals trump the etiquette.
But etiquette rules are actually much more flexible than that and understand that not every gift SHOULD be accepted - in fact, old fashioned etiquette is that the first piece of jewelry a woman can accept from a man not her father is her engagement ring - and from there on she can only accept jewelry from men who are her husband, father or sons.
Etiquette says normally you eat what your hostess puts in front of you. But it doesn’t say you NEED to eat it if you are a vegetarian - you use some discretion to avoid making a deal out of it, but you don’t need to eat it. What you mustn’t do is make a big deal about not eating it.
Of course, this assumes everyone is playing by the rules of Western etiquette - where we are not supposed to make a big deal about what other’s eat or don’t eat, what our host serves or doesn’t serve - and simply do our best to make the host comfortable when we are the guests and the guests comfortable when we are the host (or in this case, both the giver and the recipient of the gift as comfortable as possible).
Here is the situation with the bottle of liquor. You give a bottle of liquor to an acquaintance. They accept it in an effort to be nice. You learn later that they are a recovering alcoholic (or Mormon or don’t drink because they lost their father in a drunk driving incident and can’t stand to see the stuff). You still feel crummy. Probably worse than you would had they been appreciative of the thought, but said that they couldn’t accept the gift at the time.
I’m with Nzinga, Seated. Now, just to clarify, here’s my take on how etiquette applies to gifts. It certainly doesn’t mean you must accept all gifts, especially if doing so would or might lead you to do something immoral. You may decline gifts as long as you do so politely.
If someone who doesn’t keep alcohol in their house for any reason, be it religious, health-related, or simply because it will gather dust and never be used, he or she may decline it politely saying something along the lines of, “Thank you very much but I can’t accept this.” This also works on unwanted gifts of jewelry. There is nothing rude about thanking a person and declining a gift; there is something rude about pouring it down the sink or about openly and visibly taking offense that that particular gift was given. I was talking about this with coworkers yesterday, and we came to the conclusion that, even if the gift is intended as an insult, i.e. if a bottle of wine is given to a tee-totaler who has repeatedly said he doesn’t drink and, included with the gift is some jocular/insuling comment, responding rudely and insulting the person or pouring the wine down the sink, while understandable, remains rude.
As Miss Manners has written, manners are what you do in public. Ethics and morals are what you do in private. Gift giving is mostly public, and manners top morals.
People have given me all sorts of strange things, and I just say “Thank you” and regift them. Miss Manners says regifting is fine, provided the original gifter isn’t there when it happens.
On a completely different scale, I loathe chocolate(so much so that I just had to check the spelling). I avoid it if at all possible. I’m not allergic, I just can’t stand the taste. Fortunately, the rest of my family are fiends for the stuff. Last Christmas, for example, someone gave me a jar of Hershey’s kisses. Heh, it thrilled my family, and the exchange of gifts was enough for the two of us.
-Lil
I only receive alcohol from people who either a) know I will just serve it at parties or b) don’t know me well enough to get offended when I choose not to drink it myself.