#Holiday gift exchange how to

When I recently tweeted about my hatred of both giving and receiving gifts, I found many kindred spirits. We give our children and their cousins presents, but it’s getting fraught already with my older daughter, who is quite particular and has about as good a poker face as I do. And while I have improved over the 16 years my husband and I have been together, this still really isn’t my forte.

#Holiday gift exchange how to

I’m Jewish and I can’t remember not knowing that American Jewish parents give their kids gifts on Hanukkah so that the kids don’t feel left out of the gift-giving season, despite not celebrating Christmas.īut I married into a family that both celebrates Christmas and finds gift-giving meaningful, so I wanted to learn how to give and get gifts gracefully.

I think this is in part because I grew up in a household that had no particular attachment to gift-giving rituals. We were both disappointed, and the episode confirmed my long-held feelings about compulsory gift-giving, especially around the holidays: Though I don’t begrudge anyone who finds joy in holiday gift-giving, I find the whole exercise to be emotionally exhausting and spiritually unfulfilling, often causing more anxiety for both parties than it’s worth.

I tried to rein in my visible displeasure, but the damage was done (the jeggings went over worse than the panda, which was at least kind of cute). This wasn’t the first time he’d missed the mark on a present we still don’t talk about the robot panda fiasco of 2007, though it was immortalized on a podcast. I absolutely detested everything he got me - including a pair of those hideous jeggings - and I have no poker face, so my reaction went undisguised: A for effort, D for execution. My husband and I were engaged at the time, and as a holiday present, he bought me a selection of clothing from a local boutique. It’s a miracle my relationship survived the acid-washed jeggings debacle of 2009.