Do you have a gift giving strategy?

Sure, it's been forever since I have written...but everyone else has been pretty quiet too. I dislike this time of year. It's supposed to be about giving and togetherness. Instead I find myself smiling at people I barely know at various "holiday" (really Christmas) gatherings and speanding time with rude, over-worked, underpaid retail staff.

For the 20% of gift recipients who I know well and care deeply for, gift giving is a labor of thoughtfulness, inventiveness, and love.

For the other 80%, like office colleagues that gossip about me behind my back (once again, I am still not sleeping with the boss - the only way this will change is if I am left alone with him while dead), relatives that still wonder how/why they are related to me, and "friends" that I almost wish I never met, my gift giving goals are:
1) making myself look as good as possible with my impeccable taste and style
2) doing goal #1 as cheaply as absolutely possible (as a friend of mine likes to say, "cheap is good, but free is better" - so I am not adverse to the regifting concept)

I am sure that there are people reading this and feeling appalled. Oh, please spare me your feigned shock. We all feel the same way, but cannot get out of the spiral - if someone gives me a gift, and I have nothing for them, then I look like the jackass, so I am forced to continue the ritual.

If you are truly shocked at this point, stop reading. You certainly don't want to know about my secret 3rd goal...

Goal 3: To somehow make the recipient feel like an ass. One of my best strategies on this one is to give a gift to my friend as a "couples" gift that is more thoughtful than what he/she would have ever come up with for his/her own spouse. I love seeing the look of being thrilled on the spouse's face slowly get taken over by a look of disappointment in the spouse. Another way to pull this off is with a thoughtful gift for the child. Here's a classic one...

The back-story...
A male co-worker was busting my chops because another guy from Delaware was in town and we are all the same age. I was going out with the DE guy a lot because, well, it was fun, and my co-worker had family obligations. So when the co-worker heard that the DE guy and I had plans at a fancy restaurant, he invited himself and his family and another friend of ours to kind of break it up. Honestly, I was fine with it, but I wanted to stick it to him so I bought a toy for his son - explaining that it would help him to behave better during dinner (which it did). At first, his wife was thrilled that I thought of this and then she realized that really, her husband should have come up with this on his own (in this case the transition took under 10 seconds).

See for yourself...

The Gift....                        The Look...


I love how she is obviously trying to still act happy. Can you believe that I had the balls to snap these photos? I actually was a little surprised at myself on that one, but this photo was just the inspiration I needed this holiday season.

Ok, this really does officially make me a horrible person...I guess. But really, I do feel pretty strongly against the obligatory gift-giving that I am forced into at this time of year. These kinds of tactics at least let me get some enjoyment out of having to part with my own hard earned cash. The alternative list of "fake" gifts (candles, gloves, photoframes, soap, etc.) are as disapointing to give as they are to get. At least one of us should be happy.

For the record, I have never stooped to the level of giving someone something that is contaminated, intentionally damaged or defective, or any of the other childish bullshit that the average 12 year-old boy my think up. Part of the fun is dreaming up the gift with just the right message.

;)