My father is also a horrible gift recipient. Ungracious, hard to please...well, I suppose that comes from not denying himself anything, but you know how people say "Aw...you don't have to do that?" He appears to mean it. But that's not cool to find out AFTER you've selected something.

With our friends, we usually do a group thing, which means only one of us has to come up with a really thoughtful idea. Or we can use someone's idea as a jumping off point.

For instance, for BFF's moving to LA gift, I had the idea that we could throw in for something from Tiffany's-like the little silver lock necklace she gave me for my 30th birthday. G thought, a key ring with all of our house keys, but we decided there were too many of us. While someone was looking through the site, they found a silver necklace with a horseshoe (which was thematically perfect since we were going for a "Good luck!" vibe).

This year, our birthday gifts to each other were, umm. Going to see Dark Knight.

Paul is not very gifted at gift-giving, bless him. He can do shiny tech gifts, but I think anything else frightens and confuses him.

So no one watching the sprinting?

I watched the men's 100 after the fact! I think my divorce from sports is complete, though. I didn't feel the thrill I would have even four years ago. Which is sad, because that was one hell of a performance.

I like lists. (in fact, this conversation prompted me to go to Amazon, add a crapload of stuff onto my wishlist and then organize it into 3 separate lists.)

This conversation just reminded me that I need to update mine. I think I may have initiated it a couple birthdays ago for my mothers benefit. She then responded that buying anything online was just too complicated. *sigh*

When I was young, my family never did lists and I would always come home with a box full of knick knacks that I would never use. I never doubted that they loved me and never associated gift giving with quality of our relationship. We all loved each other. We just sucked at gift giving. I think this is the reason I am so pro list.

Lack of lists is one reason I scored a hot pink and green night shirt with "Eta" in fancy script over the left breast a few years back. I don't think that even made it home with me. Jeez.

I hate being asked what I want because I think it's rude to put the onus of gift-receiving on the recipient. I would rather not receive a gift at all than have to come up with a wish list - and that's not me being passive-aggressive, I really truly don't need any more stuff, and I don't like feeling like I'm using my friends and family as personal shoppers.

I don't know if it's true that it's the thought that counts, but with list giving it feels like it's the thing that counts.

No no; at Christmas the quantity of things is the most important part! What they actually are is secondary.

...What?

There's also the thing where a large number of the gifts exchanged in my family are media. And it's really not possible for me to keep track of what books/DVDs my brother wants and hasn't bought for himself already. Often the wish list is more a "I promise not to buy these things myself in the next month" list.

but he had a thing about spending the exact same amount on each child)

This is my dad. In fact, he usually calls me a month or so before Christmas to ask how much he spent on each kid and then on each grandkid, so that everyone gets the same amount. Then, he tells me to go do the shopping and he'll pay me back. Sigh. So, I do ask for lists because I will eventually run out of ideas on my own. There's no guarentee they'll get everything on them, but it allows me to fill in the blanks, plus gives me ideas for future gift giving opportunities.

This is an interesting conversation because you can see how much notions of gift-giving are driven by family tradition and culture.

Yeah, most of attitudes on gift giving come from being brought up by two parents who grew up with few material things.

No no; at Christmas the quantity of things is the most important part! What they actually are is secondary.

This is also true. See above, re: parents that had nothing. We didn't get things from our parents otherwise during the year, so Christmas was quite huge. I don't remember when we started counting, but we did at some point. It became even more excessive after my mom died (at Christmas). Even before my niece and nephew, with just my Dad and four adults, we were always well over 100 presents. Of course, these could be things like industrial-size kitchen foil, as my Dad made it his mission to up the count with silly random (but useful) items.

there truly is nothing like getting a present that is a) unasked for, b) given by a loved one, c) something that clearly shows they thought about you and who you are and what you love.

And this is where the performance anxiety comes from. I've actually stopped giving my best friends gifts--I just trust that they know I love them 24/7 and not to expect anything birthday/Christmas/Hannukah other than my best wishes.

I don't expect it to happen all the time. I think it's just spacial when it does.

I have a friend whose husband is notoriously bad at gift giving, even when he tries hard. (The 50 ft of bubble wrap for her birthday, because she loved popping it, didn't go down well.) So she makes lists, and he has strict instructions that if he veers from the list, to check with one of her friends.