cash is a good present only when the giver is sufficiently wealthy that they can give you a meaningful amount of it without expecting you to respond in kind. when people give me cash I tend to just put it in my pocket and forget about it, spending it down on random daily expenses. when someone gives me a gift card, I usually buy a specific item that I will then associate with that person and think of them when I use it.

I'd rather get cash from my proverbial rich uncle, but I'd prefer a gift card from a friend. honestly my favorite way to exchange presents with friends is just to tell each other exactly what we want. then we each get a useful thing that reminds us of our friendship.

What's the point of telling each other exactly what you want and buying the other's thing? Seems like just swapping the chore of purchase to me.

In my family, for Christmas, everyone fills out a short questionnaire (hobbies, goals, what are you learning, where are you going, favorite authors/genres) then we use the questionnaires to guide gift giving. This way, there's still room for creativity and thoughtfulness in gift giving, but it's guided by the responses. Plus, it's fun to read everyone's answers and you can give gifts that line up with multi-year trends after a while.

Agreed, what's the point, indeed? My wife and I have just forgone buying gifts for each other entirely, unless one of us happens to think of something that would just be perfect for the other, without any calendar restriction.

But we no longer feel like we have to buy something for the other on some arbitrary date looks like a birthday or holiday.

It's so freeing. Bonus: we have less stuff in our house.

Trying to implement this with my extended family. We still but gifts for the kids though, they enjoy it.

If it works for you, all the more power, but this sounds about as warm and loving as a chemistry test.

If we boiled everything down to sheer logic we wouldn't celebrate Christmas at all. The point isn't necessarily what makes the most "sense," it's about tradition and good feelings.

the point is you think of the other person when you use their gift. it makes an item that would have been mundane, had you purchased it for yourself, a little more special.

your system sounds nice too though, just a little more effort than I want to put in.

As I ended my first post with, I’d take no gift at all over any of that. I’d rather have a good memory or a connection.

For the most part Christmas gifts are about balancing an equation by buying each other shit you don’t need and then hoping your spend cancels each other out. If it doesn’t, resentment and drama.

You can both spend/save the exact same money together by buying nothing. Club together on food, drinks, hospitality. Get some good ingredients and booze, some stuff for the kids, and then help make it happen.

Don’t bother trading things you would have already bought yourself.

Unless you’re a child.

> As I ended my first post with, I’d take no gift at all over any of that. I’d rather have a good memory or a connection.

I agree entirely with this. This is why my social circle (and most of my family) has a "no gifts" rule around gift-giving holidays and events (children excepted). But not everyone follows that.

I tried it with my family and they still insisted on offering gifts. I couldn’t take them in good conscience and eventually I left that family,

I’m happier now than I was playing their game. The only time I do gifts now are because I genuinely, altruistically, want to share something.

> The only time I do gifts now are because I genuinely, altruistically, want to share something.

And that is the sort of gift that actually has meaning!

I frequently give gifts to my friends and family, but rarely around some sort of event. It happens when I see something that I know a particular person would love, so I get it and give it to them.

I think that makes the gift truly meaningful. Not because its actually personalized, but because it demonstrates that I was thinking about them at a time when I was not expected to be.

Not necessarily. If I give my mother $50 for a spa place, I'm gifting her a relaxing day that she might not be able to budget for or otherwise justify. If I gift her $50 cash, it's probably going to get used as part of next week's grocery budget if not lost in her purse entirely.

> If I give my mother $50 for a spa place, I'm gifting her a relaxing day that she might not be able to budget for or otherwise justify.

If you know that your mother enjoys that particular spa, then I agree, it's a good, thoughtful gift -- basically that's the right way to use gift cards/certificates.

That's not how they're used for the most part. For example, 90% of the time when I'm given a gift card, it's for Amazon -- the thought behind that is precisely the same as it would be for cash, except that I am now constrained to using it on Amazon rather than somewhere else that may be a lot better for me.

People give Amazon gift cards because they think of them as basically giving cash without giving cash. I know it's not universal but, for me, an Amazon gift card just gets deposited straight into my Amazon account and applied against new orders until it's gone.

> People give Amazon gift cards because they think of them as basically giving cash without giving cash.

For people who think of them that way, it just raises the question -- then why not give cash? Cash is much more useful.

Well, why not talk to them and say you’ll make the spa happen rather than buying a voucher? A gift card is a crap surprise so why not communicate and say that for Christmas, you’ll make their spa trip happen. Then you go and book it or make arrangements. Like you would before gift cards existed. Sort it out for them so they don’t have to do it themselves.

If she takes 50 bucks and uses it in groceries it’s because she needs them. If you arrange a spa day outright then it’s not a question of money.