Another one I recall was a writer complaining about how her parents instisted that she and her boyfriend sleep in different rooms when she came home from college. She complained that her parents were being “Victorian” (horrors!).
Miss Manners replied that the Victorian solution was to put unmarried couples in different rooms, and then to ignore any nocturnal traffic in the hallways.
Reading through those responses made me realize the distinction most of the complainants were not making. There is nothing wrong with giving, receiving, or execting cash as a gift. The line is crossed when you ask for it (or any other gift.)
You should never solicit gifts. Never. Not even for your birthday. That’s why registry cards are out. If you are registered somewhere, you tell you parents, other family, or a close friend, and gift inquiries should be directed there. I thought this was common knowledge and practice until Mrs. Magill and I got married.
Or, as Mrs. Bale once put it: “Two rooms have been prepared. Two rooms need not be occupied.”
I completely agree with this. The problem arises when a couple has all the household stuff they need or want and don’t need any knick knacks or good china. How, exactly, do you dance around that?
This seems reasonable to me: “Well, they’re not registered anyplace because they have everything they need. You don’t have to give them anything; they just want you at the wedding. If you REALLY want to get them something they’d like money or gift certificates.” Most people say it’s “soliciting gifts”, but isn’t it the same as “soliciting gifts” at Macy’s? I don’t get the distinction between soliciting “cash” and “stuff”.
The distinction isn’t so much between soliciting cash vs. soliciting stuff, chique, as it is between offering unsolicited information vs. providing solicited information. Putting registry cards in an invitation (or horrid money tree poems) or any other sort of hint that gifts are expected is soliciting gifts and is right out. Having a stock answer for people who have asked what you would like for a gift is a completely different thing, whether you registered at a department store or would like people to contribute to your house fund. That’s because in the latter case the giver has decided all on his own to give you a gift and requested further information, while in the former case you’re prompting your guests to give you something.
Oh, and some etiquette folks will make an exception to the rule about mentioning gifts in an invitation, if and only if it’s an invitation to a wedding or baby shower. The exception is strictly because the whole purpose of these parties is to give the bride (or sometimes groom) or expectant parent gifts. If you weren’t all giving this person presents, it wouldn’t be a shower, it would just be a party to celebrate the upcoming nuptials or birth. Since the party by it’s very nature is a solicitation of gifts, it’s not necessarily considered bad etiquette to include such information in a shower invite.
Incidentally, this is why neither you nor your immediate family should host a shower for you. Soliciting gifts for someone else is quite a different thing than soliciting them for yourself or your immediate family. The family thing has relaxed quite a lot over the years, as families become more economically independent of each other, but it’s still quite gauche to throw your own party where the sole purpose is for people to give you gifts.
See, that’s what I thought, but people get all oogy when you bring up portraits of dead presidents. “Giving money just isn’t DONE” is so alien to me. Around here you get money when you get born, when you have a birthday, when you graduate, when you get married, and when you croak. Not that “stuff” isn’t given; just that it’s usually a 50/50 mix, if not a gift plus money in the card.
Oh, I see what you’re getting at now. You’re talking about regional social mores rather than more general etiquette rules. A lot of people confuse their own social mores with actual etiquette, on all sides of pretty much every divide you can imagine. On a wedding board, I once saw a bride start an entire thread about the dollar dance and how tacky and rude it was to extract money from one’s guests in such a manner, then post that she and her fiance had made $20,000 on their stag party or jack and jill or whatever it was she called it. And then the posts from still other regions about how rude both traditions were started. In short, can open, worms everywhere.
I only had a problem with her one time, and it was a column that, to me, seemed to be in direct contrast to that principle.
My mom once showed me a MM column concerning the matter of “family stories”: the anecdotes that get told at family gatherings about the cute/dumb/embarrassing thing a family member did when they were a wee one. MM’s take on it was that the “tellee”—the subject of the anecdote—was bound by social mores to grin and bear it.
The thing is, my mom knew that this was a sore spot with me, because she has many such anedotes. But what I don’t think she or anyone else realized was that they were taking it way beyond teasing, simply making me a scapegoat. The embarrassing anecdotes were always and only about me. Never anyone else. And they were told over and over, long past the point where they’d ceased to be funny, if they ever were. And meanwhile, I was knocking myself out trying to be mature and sophisticated, but I was never given the chance to live down stuff I’d done when I was four.
But my mom rejoiced in this column; it was on the fridge for a while. “You’re stuck, Rilchie! You’ll be hearing these stories till the end of time! Woo hoo hoo!”
My solution? I asked my aunt, with whom my mom does not always get along, for some anecdotes about my mom when she was a kid. For some reason, she didn’t think they were very funny when I told them at Thanksgiving.
And I’m sure MM would not approve. But heck, she’s not Ann Landers. The idea is to present reasonable courses of action to reasonable people; she can’t factor in dysfunction.
It’s a time, place, manner, and person thing - then. What you wrote (and the wording you wrote) is a reasonable response if I’m asking the Maid of Honor about where the couple are registered.
A demand on the invitation for cash only (or any other type of gift) is not.
Sometimes, there’s a fine line between letting people who ask you know where they might be able to find a gift that you would like and saying “gimme.” Sometimes it’s really clear on which side of the line the gift information lands.
I don’t remember that exact column but I would guess you are not recalling all of MM’s advice. Or sometimes, the newspapers edit down the columns and change MM’s intended advice.
Her stance is that one doesn’t answer rudeness with rudeness. If she said that people were supposed to grin and bear it while hearing embarrassing stories about themselves, I am positive she would have said to “grin” with a frosty frozen smile along with a facial expression that made it perfectly clear to all persons there that you were not happy to be the subject of such a joke. And then to politely inquire, so that all could hear, something like, “I beg your pardon, but why would you continue to tell that story when I have repeatedly said that it hurts and embarrasses me?” All the while with the frosty smile on your face.
For REALLY bad stories, she would have just said to affix the look of death on the person and draw yourself up and say, “I BEG your pardon???” No once present could remain unaware that you were being insulted by the storyteller.
I have read all of her books and she never says to just grin and bear it AND to lie there like a doormat. She says not to be rude in return, but to make it known in a polite fashion that that story is hurtful/that question is none of the inquirer’s business/that remark is out of line.
Ah! Well, then that must be another case of my mom seeing what she wants to see.
By which I mean that my mom didn’t get the gist of it either: she didn’t realize that MM was pointing out that the “teller”, in these cases, is the one who is rude.
Well, I can’t guarantee that your mom is misunderstanding it - just that MM is definitely not a “take insults and don’t complain” type of advice-giver. She simply says that one must respond with frosty politeness - the higher the degree of frostiness, the more it conveys the appalling rudeness of the other person. It’s actually quite easy to put other (rude) people in their proper place by using excessive politeness - Miss Manners has a whole section in one book about how to do this. It makes the insultee look like they are only being too kind, while making it clear to the insulter and everyone within earshot how rude and intrusive the rude person is.
Having followed, in horrified fascination and occasional moments of recognition, the saga of Rilchiam’s mom, I can believe that she would willfully misunderstand a Miss Manners column into approval of her behavior.
People never see their own ill behaviors in advice columns. Especially not in a Miss Manners column where the snarkiness os occasionally so well done it’s missable by the dense.
That’s when you give them a book or a curio or a novelty that will not necessarily give them anything they need but will be something for them to remember you by in years to come.
One gives gifts not to fill the recipient’s needz, but to cement the bond of friendship. A useless but humorous geegaw can sometimes fill that role as well as, or even better, a highly useful but unmemorable kitchen fixture.
Yeah, that sort of thing is one of the reasons I don’t speak to my mother. I highly recommend this course of action.
What course of action?
THAT course of action.
I see. Thank you.